Smaller world

[Missy]

They make me bored. They make me not want to check my character.

How is clicking a button and watching a number increase every three hours more boring than watching any other number do the exact same thing?

Face it, none of the projects in Cantr exactly make for action-packed excitement. If they were seriously the only reason I could find to check my characters I wouldn't want to either. In fact I wouldn't be playing at all and instead take up a more interesting hobby, like watch grass grow.

Are all your chars hermits or what?

Whatever gives you the impression that I sit and watch the clock tick on any project from anything I've said?


I'm not looking at the percentage of what a character's doing and knowing it's a repair and saying to myself, "Gee I don't want to check the character because this takes so long." If thats your impression.

I rarely check percentages on any project.


What I am saying is that, they don't serve any point to me. A waste of time as in, there are many other things I could be doing with the time it takes for me to log in, look into my chars inventory, put the item in the activity list, and then go to repair it/find someone else to repair it etc....With having to think about, how I'm going to hire someone for this, how I'm going to get the stuff made for a quarry, how I'll get a car built..How I'll get a person replaced, the last thing I want to spend my time thinking about is how I'll get my damn tools repaired. It's a turn off.
I'm saying that I absolutely can not grasp the point in repairs. It literally makes the game unfun for me. It's about time.

People want more war, more this, more that---You keep implementing shit and I don't have enough time to focus on the things that you keep saying are missing from the game. That's the problem I'm having with these things.

[T-shirt]

Repairs: that really is a difficult issue. I must admit that as a player, I'm also quite frustrated with it. But if we do too much to ease it, we make it pointless again, just like many other things we implemented. So I'm not really sure what to do to be honest. How to avoid that you can gather so much by just being patient - you should have staff to own a lot. That's fair enough, but the result is boring gameplay, which is bad. So I'm not sure.

Forget repairing. Have every item degrade by use and not by time. A bone needle can be used 5 to 20 times before it's broken. A steel needle hundreds of times. I have never repaired a hammer in my entire life, but almost every one of my characters has.

I think the simplest way to make the most people happy with skills is just to make them easier to train. Right now it's like you're pretty much stuck with whatever you get, even if you spend years and years practicing. (I had a char that had to hunt nearly 1500 animals before going from novice ot efficient, for example...and even then there wasn't much improvement in the actual amount of damage they did.) And they do have a pretty big impact, so they're not really something that's easy to ignore. (espeically combat)

Improving skills should indeed be made easier. If skills are not used though, they should degrade again.

[Phalynx]

And shortening roads isn't knee jerk reaction? Some places the roads are already short and they're short because people went and collected the materials that they needed for an oil pump, they travelled the distance it was to oil and gathered the oil and all the way back home to add it to the road. Plus sand. Plus stone.

Once again----Some people worked for those things. Why do people always want to do something that makes others work LESS-hard, to achieve those same things?

What I am saying is that, they don't serve any point to me. A waste of time as in, there are many other things I could be doing with the time it takes for me to log in, look into my chars inventory, put the item in the activity list, and then go to repair it/find someone else to repair it etc....With having to think about, how I'm going to hire someone for this, how I'm going to get the stuff made for a quarry, how I'll get a car built..How I'll get a person replaced, the last thing I want to spend my time thinking about is how I'll get my damn tools repaired. It's a turn off.
I'm saying that I absolutely can not grasp the point in repairs. It literally makes the game unfun for me. It's about time.

People want more war, more this, more that---You keep implementing shit and I don't have enough time to focus on the things that you keep saying are missing from the game. That's the problem I'm having with these things.

This shows my point down to a tee!

'No No don't make the game easier... we don't need to change things... oh except the things that irk me and make life harder for my characters.."

Are you having a laugh?

[Missy]

And shortening roads isn't knee jerk reaction? Some places the roads are already short and they're short because people went and collected the materials that they needed for an oil pump, they travelled the distance it was to oil and gathered the oil and all the way back home to add it to the road. Plus sand. Plus stone.

Once again----Some people worked for those things. Why do people always want to do something that makes others work LESS-hard, to achieve those same things?

What I am saying is that, they don't serve any point to me. A waste of time as in, there are many other things I could be doing with the time it takes for me to log in, look into my chars inventory, put the item in the activity list, and then go to repair it/find someone else to repair it etc....With having to think about, how I'm going to hire someone for this, how I'm going to get the stuff made for a quarry, how I'll get a car built..How I'll get a person replaced, the last thing I want to spend my time thinking about is how I'll get my damn tools repaired. It's a turn off.
I'm saying that I absolutely can not grasp the point in repairs. It literally makes the game unfun for me. It's about time.

People want more war, more this, more that---You keep implementing shit and I don't have enough time to focus on the things that you keep saying are missing from the game. That's the problem I'm having with these things.

This shows my point down to a tee!

'No No don't make the game easier... we don't need to change things... oh except the things that irk me and make life harder for my characters.."

Are you having a laugh?

Yeah, *sighs,* that says it all to a tee. Thank you, walking explanation-man. You and me, we just have all the answers to everything and you're deffinately more right than I am. You have nothing to gain at all by posting in the way you did and for the purpose you did. I won't pretend like you did.

[formerly known as hf]

I desperately think what we don't need to do is to encourage re-population of the old islands.

Cantr has been in the age of sailing and exploration for some time, and more recently, settlements on 'new' islands' have started to flourish.

This is a change we should embrace, not try to halt.

It's not surprising that new characters feel it difficult to do anything on the older islands, where almost everything that can be done has been done. The desire to get away and get somewhere new, the frontier drive, should not be refused.


The new settlements have happened for in-game reasons. To get to new resource, to escape boredom. to escape capture etc. etc.

People seem to be saying that we should let things on the old lands take their natural course, and not meddle.
But, at the same time, when the natural course is for increasing numbers of characters to leave and try anew elsewhere, the same people want to meddle in that respect, and stop that 'natural course'.

A new settlement, new, unexplored lands, new socities, making your own history - these are all things many characters yearn for, and things many players have said they want.


I think we should encourage this change. Yes there should be risk from animals, but not at the frankly absurd current levels - small, new, settlements should be able to support a couple of newspawns, and healing foods should be made more effective, given the lack of natural healing.


Clearly the old islands are deeply boring for some characters/players. The natural course, then, is for those characters to seek elsewhere. If there is to be no encouragement of this movement via 'disasters', we should at least not stop the current exodus.

[viktor]

Repairs: that really is a difficult issue. I must admit that as a player, I'm also quite frustrated with it. But if we do too much to ease it, we make it pointless again, just like many other things we implemented. So I'm not really sure what to do to be honest. How to avoid that you can gather so much by just being patient - you should have staff to own a lot. That's fair enough, but the result is boring gameplay, which is bad. So I'm not sure.

repairs should be kept it's good to have them just, a little less than they are at current so they still prevent resource death but not so much they creat fun death make people able to repair faster or reduce rot at least on iron and steel items, extreemly primitive things like bone tools should not be capable of repair they should rot away to nothing and the bone tools should keep thier current level of rot, stone hammers(with rot reduced) as well as any other stone tool should be unrepairable as well. but of course, only if we can repair faster and most rot reduced. trust me

Finding reliable staff: I think there are in-game solutions, like redundancy and tricks that you don't have to trust your staff much (e.g. pay them upon delivery of goods rather than up front), as well as starting your company in bigger towns. One thing that surprises me a lot in Cantr demographics is indeed the spread over large areas. Why does everyone want their own 10-person town to rule, instead of enjoying the benefits of large labour supply / lots of traffic / lots of trade that a big town can provide? You would expect that you can be far more powerful in a large, coastal town, than in yet another village in a forest ... So I totally agree with Marian there.

meh if someone worries about staff they have the option of storing thier good stuff out of everyone elses reach, or in more wealthy more advanced cultures, everyone owns certain things that you worry they may steal if lent out to them instead, in game issue entirely and like jos mentioned, incentive: pay after the job.

40-day rule: I really want players to care about their characters. Long term players generally do, short term players less so. You see people, even those played for a long time, where the character experiences a slightly more difficult period in life, and they just give up. Or you arrest them for a crime, and instead of being sad or upset or whatever, they just stop playing. That's boring! If we were all good roleplayers, we didn't need the 40-day rule, but I think it helps.

the only reason the 40 day rule is such a problem is because it is so... indescriminate, yes it punishes those who have suicidal newspawns (which i might add i had no problem dealing with in game to begin with and gave guards something to do which helped keep the game more interesting), but the main problem is when legitimate players get penalised when something beyond thier control causes thier characters to die early, and it would be unreasonable to ask each and every case(as they are countless) to be examined induvidually, which is why i am on my knees *drops to his knees and plees* and desperatly beg for a reduction not elimination of this penalty 40 days is just...... brutal

Animals that kill you: in my opinion an essential part of the game; sometimes it's just about survival. And although individuals can do little, groups certainly can fix it in this case.

animals killing you is absolutly a natural thing and totally an in game issue, and being killed by an animal i wouldn't complain about, just the 40 day penalty when one of my chars gets killed by them young is my complaint. i myself have had 2 chars manage to avoid death, one by sheer luck, one through great risk of abandoning his location. 2 points, 1 if you find a new location how did you get there? by ship or other vehicle? well then you know when project update times are by now do the prarie dog tactic, 2 if you were spawned in a settled location, in most cases there is a building material there which you could collect before or come back to collect if you find an unsettled animal filled location and swiftly pop up a shelter and therefore settle so animals are fine as is.

other things i've noticed posted, it isn't hard to do things on the old islands there are still tons of opportunities for newspawns and in a lot of areas, still a lot of freedoms like there have been for RL years. in fact, the older more develloped cultures should have more to offer newspawns in way of jobs and other various 'stuff' and easier to travel because of better roads(which i might add i see a lot of primitive roads still so there is still a lot of that to do anyways)

clicking a button and watching your project progress is more interesting than watching grass grow, trust me i've done both.

the occasional hermit may not be the most exciting thing but stumbling on the ruins of a hermit 100 years later makes for an archeological dig site

[Phalynx]

The new settlements have happened for in-game reasons. To get to new resource, to escape boredom. to escape capture etc. etc.

People seem to be saying that we should let things on the old lands take their natural course, and not meddle.
But, at the same time, when the natural course is for increasing numbers of characters to leave and try anew elsewhere, the same people want to meddle in that respect, and stop that 'natural course'.

A new settlement, new, unexplored lands, new socities, making your own history - these are all things many characters yearn for, and things many players have said they want.

Clearly the old islands are deeply boring for some characters/players. The natural course, then, is for those characters to seek elsewhere. If there is to be no encouragement of this movement via 'disasters', we should at least not stop the current exodus.

No problem with this at all, but if a new player lands a character on the 'old' islands and are faced with begging for a lift on a boat and then a five year journey to an island, don't be too suprised if they end up with a heart attack and timed out account.

Why does the focus keep drifting from the point of the issue. The game needs to interest new players. It has to be more exciting than the x-box 360 for a few people - it is for me, but its only because of very intermittent reinforcement!

Lifted shamelessy from the webzine:

It was boring in the beginning to play cantr (when I had plenty of time to do that) just because there were no chars in the Polish area. I remember the time when in the biggest Polish city, there were about 10 players, and just 4-5 of them were active enough. How do you do anything? It's not possible to do everything oneself. That's why I wanted to have more players and more chars in the game.

Interview with PRUT

[Marian]

Whatever gives you the impression that I sit and watch the clock tick on any project from anything I've said?

It's okay, calm down. I wasn't seriously implying that, I just found it funny the way you phrased things. Obviously if your bored and don't want to check your chars it has nothing to do with whatever project they are or aren't working on, I realize that, you just made it sound like if you were working on repairs the game became boring, so my first response when I read that was like 'wait, isn't there anything else going on on that events page?'

Weather system: yeah, long, long overdue Smile. Was number 1 on my priority list one week after I started Cantr Smile. I'll think about a good implementation asap Smile.

Ah, I knew there was something I forgot to reply to. This is seriously the most best thing I've read in the entire thread. I don't know how you'd go about implementing a weathersystem, I'm guessing it's going to take awhile and need a lot of testing, but I'm happy just knowing it's in the works now. I've played a lot of MUDs with good weather systems though, complete with sunrises, sunsets, moons, and constellations, so it definitely is doable. (Having all that in Cantr would rock btw...somebody could come up with all kinds of crazy religious stuff to go with them. "Hmm, let's see, this man just spawned under the sign of the Little Longboat, just as the full moon rose...OMG he's gonna be a pirate kill him! )

[formerly known as hf]

Alternatively, it would be good to implement trains/canals to diminish distance...

The only reasons there are no mass transit systems in Cantr is because of the silly-rare resources required to upgrade roads and build busses.

Soda for window glass?
Oil for roads?

There's not much of either anywhere on the old islands...


The old areas are rich - very rich. In steel, wood, stone...
There would be busses making regular travels if the roads and busses were made of steel and wood.

So - trains...

Which are well within the Cantr tech level.

[wichita]

Soda for window glass?
Oil for roads?

There's not much of either anywhere on the old islands...

The old areas are rich - very rich. In steel, wood, stone...
There would be busses making regular travels if the roads and busses were made of steel and wood.

I am sick and tired of hearing this shit.

One particular region which shall remain nameless:
town a: oil and limestone
-> one location: gas and limestone
-> one location: soda and sand
-> two locations: coal and wood
-> three locations: hematite, clay, potatoes, stone
-> four locations: bauxite, wood, rubber
-> seven locations: magnesium, hematite

Granted the walking distances are a bit long there, but it is nothing that can't be overcome. People walk it all the time. There is still relatively little development here, despite the concentration of "PROHIBITIVELY" RARE MATERIALS!!!!!! It isn't the resource distribution! It isn't the requirements! You want to build every fucking thing out of wood go right ahead and vanilla it on up! Just admit that the player base is mostly to blame and stop asking to get something for nothing!!! It's right there!!!! YOU DON"T EVEN HAVE TO TRADE FOR IT YOU JUST HAVE TO PLUCK YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR ASS AND GO GET IT!!!!!

[Marian]

Oil is definitity way too rare. I think you should be able to build an oil derrick anywhere, only you would only get like the 75g a day you could get by hand in a place that had oil naturally.

Then we'd see more roads build, and if oil was ever used for things like preserving tools it would be more posible. But for tools I still say fish and nut oil should be a possibility...plus anything else you can get oil out of that I'm not thinking of. Coconut oil? Rice oil? Corn oil? What am I missing? (those could all be used in new recipes, too.) Regular oil should be the very best for tools though, and it wouldn't need processing like the others.

EDIT: And wichita, I do agree with you that the players are the biggest part of the problem, but I don't think any project requiring massive amounts of steel and rails laid down across half a continent can be called 'vanillaing it up'...

Also, I can think of another region that will also remain nameless that has like one whole town with oil in an out of the way place.

[viktor]

soda and oil rarity help to encourage trade
oil is not restricted to locations with oil in the ground, there are also places with timber where you can build tarpits and pump out all the oil your heart desires, add them into the oil rich town list and you have a well balanced oil distribution.
making oil even more abundant could damage the economy.
soda is soda, you need it for 2 things, aluminum and glass, no biggy.
the resource balance is fine on the old lands i have through many sets of char eyes seen.

[Marian]

Oh that's right! I forgot about tar pits...well, that makes things a lot more balanced then.

[Jos Elkink]

Wichita, calm down

Anyway, I do totally agree, though. Yes, oil is, on purpose, very rare. It's typically something you sail for to get. I think I know which island you are talking about with only one oil place - but that place is close to the sea, and that island developed enough to have frequent sailing, so what's the issue? Sailing is far faster than walking, you can transport large amounts, sailing maps are well known by now, so ....

[Phalynx]

I find this confusing. For the first six months of the game my characters didn't trust any maps they were often 200 years old and had errors. With the exception of one who followed orders rigidly and would have walked into the sea none of them would have walked the length of the land on the chance of finding oil or soda and the ones that were in a position to, couldn't persuade anyone else to either.

It's only with OOC knowledge of the players behind the maps and other characters in those areas that I would now consider such a journey and I know that is not in the spirit of the game. I still think its miraculous that any vehicles involving rubber get made if characters truly roleplay. Moreso in the days when using the wiki was considered CRB.

I actually cringe when chracters decide to go on a long journey to get some resource. Sure if they took stuff with them for trade, but they don't they head off in the certainty they can just go and pick it up from the ground. How unrealistic! But this is an IG problem, most towns do nothing to guard their resources.