Biggest problem in Cantr

[Mafia Salad]

I'll agree with Seko on this one. The one thing that bugged me through the whole time that I played was that there is no room for experimentation or innovation in the build menu. And to make it a bit more general, a lack of freedom of action. Including the inability to directly stop people from working on a project and undo projects.

You can't make something that fails, you can't invent new things that aren't being invented in dozens of other towns at the same time. You can't really play an entrepreneur because you can't really have a new idea to market. You can only build things in a set order with set resources. It makes the goals and methods of achieving those goals the same in so many town because there is only one way of doing things or one way is obviously more efficient. It certainly does a lot to encourage the monotony that slowly kills the game. I am glad to see that in recent months the RD has been working on making more variety, but there is still a very specific build order that needs to be followed to make iron for weapons or heavy tools. There is a limitation to what you can do, and a lot of things that people say you can RP out really need the better part of the town to react and interact with that RP, and that doesn't happen.

The only way you can stop someone from going ahead with a project is to set yourself against them and their project in words and hope you can persuade enough people to your view. There is only two ways to stop someone from working on a project you don't want them to work on, dragging and killing. So that is the sum of law enforcement. you can't tear down an ugly building, you can't grab onto someone and work against other people trying to pull that person into a building. You can’t be a hindrance to someone who is making steel in protest of weapons etc. And programming changes like building rot or others along that line of though that effect world physics to solve problems just take variety out of the game and control away from the players and characters while adding extra work for upkeep.

I know that there is only so much you can do with computer programming, and that I have been away for a month now so things might have changed, but this seems like something that can always be improved while keeping game balance in mind.

[Agar]

Dear god I'm posting. I'll try not to make it a habit. But I respect Jos and since I'm one of the disgruntled ones, I might as well voice my problem.

It's too easy to get new characters.

I looked through my list of old characters, and all the ones there didn't matter. All of them, they were ones I made because I was bored, wanted to see if I could spawn somewhere cool. I wasn't making "characters" I was making possiblities, the hopes I'd land somewhere new and exciting.

Characters are uncommon in cantr. Characters have stories, opinions, views on the world. In cantr, the only way characters can get those stories and views is from having history.

I have 13 characters in cantr now, down from 15 and dropping, but out of them all, I only have one "character". His life is now a story that he's living, and the story and it inevitable future overshadows his survival. The path he's on may or may not lead to his death, but there is no other path possible, the story is too good not to take it. I've never had so much fun playing any game as I am now.

If you want more "characters" in cantr and better roleplayers, I would suggest this: Let the newbs spawn thier 2 or 3 initial characters, and maybe thier first 5 (total) wouldn't require a background, but if they try to spawn another character they would see a text box on the submit screen asking them to write a background about thier characters ideas, opinions and goals, who the character is, that would have to be reviewed and approved or edited before that character would spawn.

In three accounts and something like 60-100 characters, I've done little to add to cantr. A few maps, but no one talks about map makers, just the maps they've made. One gaurd in a sleepy mountain town that people appreciated, but was easily forgotten. Nothing really at all, nothing to be proud about. Hopefully my one "Character" will make cantr more fun to play for others. Mechanics for the game come and go, get adjusted broken, fixed, and discarded. If the game is enough fun, from enough "Characters" interacting, people will play even if they game is going to shit.

~fades back to the shadows~

[formerly known as hf]

A new player, with a week of solid playing, will be lucky to have anything more to show for it than sore feet and a few bone tools. Things are too dfficult for new characters.
Very simple tools should take a couple of Cantr hours, not a day.





More widely, though, the largest problems are:
1. Broken repair system
2. Broken combat system
3. Not enough variation in gathering/manufacturing (either by location or skills) to encourage specialisation or trade.
4. Distances too great to encourage trade or cross-locational power struggles.
5. Settling on new locations is pointlessly difficult.

- Wichita has it very right about the dilution of players, K-Isle has been fantastic to play on due to its small size in comparison - things don't just affect one place there, they affect the island - and it's the only place I've seen real, full-on, cross-locational cooperation. For a while now, I think our best bet is just to universally double all travel speeds...

[Sicofonte]

I think I'd need more time playing to have a wide impression, but meanwhile...


- Broken combat system (unrealistic, no automatic defense system, the best weapons are a lock and crowbar)

- Broken repair system (too much time repairing)

- Unrealistic building system (can't be destroyed even the door).

- Broken project system (unrealistic resource requirements, uncomfortable interface)

- Broken vehicle system (unrealistic, not enough diversity, cost and performance greatly umbalanced (1)).

- Distances too big or speed to slow (lack of really fast vehicles)

- Unrealistic char spawning (lack of a history, to be 20 years old but just being born)



(1) Pickups running faster than a sport car. Raker (viking ship?) being faster than a sloop (supposed to be better sailed and lighter than a Raker). There is obviously no consensus in the implementation.

[BZR]

My turn:

Upradge of the figthing system (this needs discussion)

Smaller world!!!!

Cars should use oil.

Resources gathering limit should be changed. For example, for now, in a place with gas, potatoes, buttercaps and sand everybody would dig for gas. I think that it should be limited: 2 places for gas, 8 for potatoes, 5 for butercaps and 20 for sand.

The current ability system is senseless. Tell me why a char who for whole his life fighted is worse at fightinh than a char who for whole his life farmed potatoes? The answer is: because he had "unlucky randoms".

[Chris Johnson]

The players and how they Roleplay

Generally too many people don't immerse themselves in their characters lives and situations - the Western cult of the individual is too prevalent in the game and players as a rule act too rationally - It's the main reason why we don't get unique and interesting societies and religions developing. It's also why conmen and storytellers fail - no one takes them seriously ingame .

There are many exceptions to this of course, but I feel they are few and far between and at least in the English areas , they seem to be in decline.

[west]

What can I say that hasn't been said?

The game is too difficult. The learning curve is too great. Why do we need dynamic naming of people, places, roads, buildings, and vehicles? It's ridiculous. All it does is create busywork. Same with repairs. No, things shouldn't last forever. But in no other game do you have to spend more time repairing things than using them.

In the past, busywork was mostly relegated to the people who organized big groups, companies, armies, whatever--a few motivated, talented people (just as in real life) with a knack for organization created great entities. Now, busywork is something you HAVE to do to keep up with the game. And for someone who's struggled finding the time to log in for years now without ever managing to quit, it becomes increasingly not worthwhile. I don't log in because I don't want to have to do the busywork. And this means my characters suffer.

I have enough busywork in real life, thanks.

I can't maintain a new character because of the hundreds of minutes I'd have to waste keeping up with people names, building names, vehicle names, road names, etc. etc. etc. There's just NO REASON TO START NEW CHARACTERS except that one is bored with one's old ones. And that brings us back to the first problem.

[T-shirt]

1. Too many uninhabited or sparsely inhabited settlements and too much traveltime for communication/trade between settlements.
2. You can't trust any other character, due to sleeping sicknes or heart attacks. Which makes lending risky (especially with expensive items like vehicles).
3. Imbalanced projects. Some projects require varied resources and complex manufacturing subprocesses, while other projects only require some resources and simple tools. For example, a limestone quary needs logs, rope, iron, steel and several tools and machines, sloops need iron and wood and a hammer (no sail, logs or rope).

[Missy]

The game is too difficult. The learning curve is too great. Why do we need dynamic naming of people, places, roads, buildings, and vehicles? It's ridiculous. All it does is create busywork. Same with repairs. No, things shouldn't last forever. But in no other game do you have to spend more time repairing things than using them.

What he said, although I think repairs are useless period. You say we have endless supply, but you lend things out IC and noone returns it. As a bussiness, govt. you don't truly have an endless supply because things aren't deteriorating.


Edit: And yes, I don't want to spend time on these things. I don't think, no matter how much anyone says they don't have a problem with them, that that means they truly want to. I honestly don't like looking in my chars inventories anymore......Because I don't want them to be repairing stuff. (And so you tell me the solution is to find someone to do it for them.) YOU find someone who wants to do repairs. It's a boring job. There was a repair shop in Krif. Guy died. We had several people take up responsibility of doing repairs in Siom...They died. It's a stupid job that noone wants because noone likes repairs period.

[Nosajimiki]

My arguement is the combat system as a whole. It needs a deffensive stance option (see the recent ship boarding thread) so that battles arent decided by locks and dragging which would open the option of large scale wars and even peasent uprising but still allowing draggings and locking up of political enemies and criminals.

Also, weapons have too clear set of a hierachy of how good and effecient they are, I think that different metal weapons should require different tool sets (maybe a longsword should take all the hammers and such they currently do, but a mace should be made with a clay mold and knife), maybe some of the low-tech ones like maces should also be able to be made with iron instead of steel. Different weapons should have differnt strengths, such as armor penitration and fieness vs. force. (EXs: a battle axe should be heavly effected by the wielder's strength, but barely effected by skill where as a sabre should be heavily wieghted by skill, while the wielder's strength becomes inconsiquiential. And in terms of penitration, a mace, if blocked should be less effected by a shield than a rapier.) Also the recomendation of bows being able to fire from one locked vessle to another has been sugested by someone else.

These kinds of changes would dramaticly create a cultureal diversification in what weapons exist where. If you live somewhere that has a lot of skilled fighters you would see a lot of rapiers, sabres, and crossbows, somewhere else where most people are strength focused you'd see a lot more maces, flails, and battle-axes, you'd also start to see fewer people with the elite weapons if they took extra tools/kinds of resources to make. As is, I see far too few low end steal weapons because they are simply to simaler in production to be able to make one without the option of the other. The way bows get progressivly more complex is IMO the way steel weapons should be also.

[Sunni Daez]

Tool Rot.. When tools are stored.. they should not rot like they do!

[Drakulya]

I know that I'm new to this game, but I believe that the tools are the largest issue. This also includes weapons. This game is highly realistic in comparison to other games, but its weapons system, its defense system, and its tools are highly lacking.

[Marian]

The players and how they Roleplay

Generally too many people don't immerse themselves in their characters lives and situations - the Western cult of the individual is too prevalent in the game and players as a rule act too rationally - It's the main reason why we don't get unique and interesting societies and religions developing. It's also why conmen and storytellers fail - no one takes them seriously ingame .

There are many exceptions to this of course, but I feel they are few and far between and at least in the English areas , they seem to be in decline.

Everything Chris said, pretty much. I just wish more people would put even the tiniest effort into adapting their newspawns to their surroundings...

[Joshuamonkey]

Boring because you have everything already?I disagree with that one, there's always something else to do, roads to improve, people to help.

Though out of this forum I've found two things, well three, 1)People are complaining that Cantr is too slow, 2) People are complaining that Cantr is too fast, and 3) There's some big problems with the whole "repairing" thing, and I agree that not being able to put things in repair projects is a bit harsh.

[saztronic]

I think the biggest problem is that good roleplay is rarely rewarded. By rewarded I mean, reciprocated, I guess. I've seen some really good roleplaying go unnoticed, which is just dispiriting to a player.

This doesn't happen all the time. I found Karnon Forest during the days of TBR to be exceptional in this regard, for example. I'm sure others have favorite places where this wasn't the case. But by and large, in the majority of towns, good roleplay is like a tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it. Even in a place like Doryiskom -- which many hate I know -- there is good roleplaying but people are roleplaying characters that are annoying. Rather than role (pun intended) with that, players instead flee the city or come on the forums to bitch about it.

Root cause of this problem? Probably many, all of which have been mentioned.

1) Too many towns in general.
2) Too much busywork detracting from time spent on roleplaying.
3) Not enough players.

Etc.