Smaller world

[Doug R.]

It's the average # of people that have been there over the last 10 days at that instant. If that average is less than X (in my suggestion, X=5) then it invalidates that location as a spawnpoint.

You would use an average like this instead of a static average to dampen the effects of natural population fluctuations at any given time.

[Oasis]

And how would this solve anything? People would have to travel twice as far to get to another populated town. It would put a damper on trading, not increase it.

I don't think shortening roads is a knee jerk reaction. This is a problem that has existed since the game began. It is a solution that I've wanted to see since I started playing, when my charries took days upon days to get anywhere, then had to go another year or so to get to the place they need to.

I don't have that problem much anymore, most of my charries are old and have good vehicles now. But I'm not thinking of me, I'm thinking of the 80 percent of other characters who don't have the advantage of good vehicles.

Sure, our characters worked hard in some areas to improve the roads, and to build those vehicles. But we were able to get to the resources. In the areas where that hasn't happened, the resources are too far away, most likely because the roads are too damn long, and people die or don't have the will to travel all the way back again, carrying only a fraction of what they'll need for those roads (not to mention the other things they need)

Sorry, bit of a rant, but now I'm done.

[wichita]

The long distance areas are sparsely populated and lend themselves to the survivalist American old-west style societies. The short distance areas are high activity, trading, and political metropolitan culture centers.

[rant]
Do we really want to destroy what few stimuli for any in-game cultural diversity whatsoever? Do we really want to be playing the same friggin' game with 15 different characters scattered across six islands? That is the game I tend to see and it creeps further and further to homogenous monotony all the time, especially when we start to get into these fatalistic moods.

There are periods when the only differences I see between any of my characters are their names and the language that the other characters are speaking around them. I've watched characters build the exact same machinery, the exact same tools, hunt pretty much the same animals and farm the exact same food, smelt the same iron in their cookie cutter cottages thrown up with stone hammers and wood gathered with stone axes....all in five languages.

Thankfully something usually comes along to save me from this vanilla flavored copy of the bland world I see in real life, and for a day or so it reminds me why I started playing this silly game in the first place. It wasn't to be the best [insert archetype here]; it wasn't to win, kill the other guy, laugh at the losers as they lay crushed and bleeding before me; it wasn't to live in a virtual world without repairing tools or mending clothes, plucking load after load of potatoes out of the field and eating them raw; it wasn't about the chance to timewarp freely from place to place in those "and time passes" game moments..... For me, it was having a game that could find beauty in the mundane and allow me to explore areas of human interaction that are not possible in the real world because we are all so so limited by the cruching confinement of "free, rational thought"....

You know that ever present spirit of individuality that forces us all to conform to each other?

Oh look. I have a bed to fall into now....

[/rant]

[Nosajimiki]

Here's another solution: Do nothing.

none of my charies have thier own vehicals and the uber long travel times are the whole reason why any of them are paricularly conserned about getting vehicals, two of them are on the verge of owning tandum bikes which to people who dont own thier own companies is a massive achievement which is motivated by those long ass roads. over 2 kilos of iron and steel plus that rubber is several years of work for most charies

as for increasing the min population for spawning, to me seems like a bad idea. Small places will never get a chance to grow like that and colonizing new lands whould become harder; however, adjusting it such that larger towns are more likely to get a new spawn is a good idea. Make an equation that instead of randomly picking from a list of places, randomly picks from a list of living characters who are in towns(not on the road or a boat). Where ever that player is (if population is atleast two of his/her language group, then that's where the new player spawns.

[Talapus]

Make an equation that instead of randomly picking from a list of places, randomly picks from a list of living characters who are in towns(not on the road or a boat). Where ever that player is (if population is atleast two of his/her language group, then that's where the new player spawns.

That is not how the spawning equation works. The chance of spawning is proportional to the square root of the population. Thus locations with high populations have a higher chance of new spawns, but small towns actually have a chance of growing.

[Nosajimiki]

in that case I would like to reform my previous statement to completely agree with Doug R.(edit: average 5 population minimum idea excluded) Leave it as is.

[Phalynx]

Jos has been more active in the forum in the last couple of weeks than in the whole preceding 10 months I have been on the forum.

Either he was a bit bored and and had some free time on his hands to stir up trouble or he has spotted some problems and is taking them seriously enough to try and find solutions. He picked out a number of key isses and asked for discussion.

'Do nothing' is not a constructive suggestion.

[Nosajimiki]

sure it is, when alternative solutions cause more harm than the precieved problem, then the only problems are the solutions, as such the way to fix them is to "do nothing" by not implimenting them. It's the whole reason the suggestions section has a rejected bin.

[Phalynx]

No because many of the suggestions that end up in 'Rejected' are not problem solving in themselves.

An assessment of the problem is the first step and I beleive that is what is going on here. Once a problem is sufficently clear then people have to compare pros and cons but some people here are simply denying the problem because things work nicely for them so they see no need for a solution.

[N-Aldwitch]

The problem is, the game is too slow for some.

[Mykey]

I think, that you are not right. I can defend the position. Write to me in PM, we will talk.

[Jos Elkink]

Jos has been more active in the forum in the last couple of weeks than in the whole preceding 10 months I have been on the forum.

Yeah, my life changed a lot - from getting involved in a relationship and travelling almost all summer, to breaking up and moving to another country and having no social life yet ... So yeah, I'm bored and thus online a lot - when my social life takes off again, it'll be detrimental to my forum activity .

'Do nothing' is not a constructive suggestion.

I really disagree with that one - see, e.g., the post by Wichita, which is a very strong argument not to do anything ...

Even though I still like the roleplaying effects disasters have

[Phalynx]

As it goes I would favour diversity in game by random events.

The idea that a a lack of resources here or a long road there promotes massive differences and trials to overcome in the game I find flawed. Quicker travel may increase the amount of time spent in interaction but doesn't effect the quality of that ineraction I guess!

I like the sneezes. What about forest fires, floods, weather, mining disasters, earthquakes, animal stampedes, radioactivity and other things. Such hazards could easily have in game solutions and promote some form of excitement and reasons for population movements and cooperation?

[formerly known as hf]

Even though I still like the roleplaying effects disasters have

Listen to the voices! Do it! Let Cantr burn

Some bits of Cantr need some inspiration - badly...
We're not all so great RPers that we can fashion a great character, be involved in or even orchestrate great events affecting many characters, out of nothing. At least I know that I can't...

[Marian]

I’ve been following the forum a lot more now that Jos is posting and there’s finally some actual discussion going on, and wow, this thread in particular has been interesting…but unfortunatley not really in a good way.

First of all let me say that I really hope this whole volcano suggestion isn’t serious, because honestly I can’t see how, “Gee, things are kind of boring on this island...I know! Let’s program in a huge dangerous catastrophe to wipe out a bunch of towns and shake things up!” is all that different in spirit from, “Gee, things are kind of boring on this island...I know! Let’s all get together over YIM and make a huge dangerous pirate crew to wipe out a bunch of towns and shake things up!” Both of them are massive OOC meddling with the world and other people’s chars in order to get a certain IG effect.

Shortening the roads is almost the same thing, even if it’s meant to be positive instead of negative.

Okay, so some islands have longer roads then others, and because of that they’re developing differently...maybe I’m way off here, but isn’t ‘different’ societies, ‘different’ cultures, ‘different’ technology levels kind of the whole point of the game? Isn’t that what people on the staff have repeatedly said they wanted?

So what happens, it comes out that this has actually worked for once and the terrain has made develepment in some areas noticeably different from others, (Gasp! You mean to say that geography might make traveling and trading and war between two places difficult sometimes? That’s crazy talk!) and the first reaction is to want to pull a dues ex machina to make everything the same again? Make everything easier across the board so no one has to struggle to accomplish anything? (That whole attitude of ‘fixing’ things by dumbing down anything even remotely challenging because ‘boohoo work is really hard!’ is exactly why highschools are churning out stupid, lazy kids btw...and I’m guessing it’ll probably have the same effect on the quality of Cantr players in the long run if this becomes a common thing)

To use another RL example, shortening the roads would be like God in the 14th century deciding that it was just way to difficult for people to trade with India, so why not just simplify things by ripping the entire country up by the roots and drop it three miles off the coast of Portugal? No one has to make long difficult trips then, huh? In fact why not just shrink all the countries down and then cram them all together so no one ever has to worry about complicated stuff like inventing faster ways to travel?

Honestly, if an area is going to stagnate because people are too lazy to get organzed and improve roads or build a couple of vehicles (and it’s NOT like a tandem bike is all that difficult to make!), then let it stagnate. Let it die even, if no one’s going to step up and make something happen. It deserves to, just like a coastal town that let’s all its leaders just stand around sleeping to death with the keys deserves to get looted or attacked. Survival of the fittest and all that. Every empire eventually falls....and some places aren't meant to be an empire in the first place. (If someone dedicated came along, even a place like Pok Desert south could be a heck of an awesome one though...I can think of just as many benefits to those long, long roads as there are drawbacks.) Aren’t characters actions, or lack of actions supposed to have an impact on the world? Isn’t that exactly what an inactive town represents, just as much as an active one?

Like I said earlier, I’m just really not sure if this whole attitude of, ‘Okay, we know this is a society simulator, but this society isn’t really developing like we planned, so let’s manipulate things OOC to try and get people to act like we want’ is healthy for the game at all. All I’m saying is that please don’t be so quick to come galloping to the rescue of chars that are perfectly capable of saving themselves...or killing themselves, or maybe something really fun and exciting nobody expects at all. Why not just let the players play and let nature take it’s course?