Cantr Is Dying. What Then Shall We Do?

[SekoETC]

Yeah Voltenion, and the game doesn't make sure that the two people are still in the location by the time that the character spawns. Most likely it keeps a list of spawn locations that is updated daily or more rarely, not every time someone tries to spawn.

[Voltenion]

well...that explains it. Dutch are close to spanish right? the "parents" of your char must have left before then...leaving you with spanish people arround. and no i don't think your an idiot

[wichita]

Better luck hearing Dutch on that island than German, bmartes. It could be worse. The Spanish girl stuck on the Esperanto island as the Spanish sailors went sailing by might share your sentiments, though.

But is it an issue for a new player who has not yet become emersed in our world?

I have no solutions, just a question

As with just about everything else, it's probably an unpredictable matter of preference. If I were new, I would probably be calm enough to work through it and figure out the game. Most of the kids signing up each day, though, probably find it extra boring. But then again...we probably don't really want that type in here anyway, so maybe it is actually a fortuitous filter.

[SekoETC]

Spawning in an empty location with stuff from dead people might be a good start, then you can try out the mechanics without someone slaughtering you over stealing and breaking the hunting ban, you'll be able to get free stuff and get a jumpstart into the game.

[Chris]

Spawning in an empty location with stuff from dead people might be a good start, then you can try out the mechanics without someone slaughtering you over stealing and breaking the hunting ban, you'll be able to get free stuff and get a jumpstart into the game.

Who would want to play a MMOG alone? The Cantr environment without people is neither challenging nor interesting.

[BarbaricAvatar]

I wouldn't say that, i've got a char who's spent many years on his own and i didn't get bored with playing him.

[Arlequin]

Yah, I've got a merchant that got strandred in a longboat following confuse directions to the Polish lands, crossed a whole sea, sailed an humungous and almost virgin island, meet some random extrangers, got a ghost galleon and piled tons of exotic things, and he's been sailing alone for 26 Cantr years --save one year with a confused young german lady that felt asleep and he left ashore.

Being lost and alone is not that bad if you go to explore and find adventures.

[Slyder_Glyder_Ryder_etc]

I had a young character and decided to get a city going in the mountains that was abandoned. He thought living on his own would be great, and if people wanted to come live there that would be fine too... Then he was almost killed by animals and is now desperately looking for people that might have some healing foods and/or a shield... I'll stick to society thank you.

[Crosshair]

I've got some wanderers, they have a good time living off the hospitability of other towns.

[Chris]

Some people may enjoy a solitary life, but it's better to let them choose it. Any spawning algorithm that can throw a newspawn into a town with no characters speaking the same language is a broken one. I would think you'd need one line of code to check whether a particular location has any people of the same language. If not, then one more line of code would loop back to the newspawn town selection process to pick another town.

[Voltenion]

I had this char that liked to create things of his own. So he left the town and started making a house for him self in another location. He wouldn't mind more people to come. He could start a new town and all, as long as he made it by his hands he wouldn't mind... But the problem is when you are alone, lithuan focus on killing just you and don't get distracted with others... -.-"

[wichita]

I actually prefer playing solitary characters at times. Fewer events to clutter the day with. In the big active cities, there is so much information coming and notes to read that I don't have time to ingest it and keep up with real life too.

So, in a sense, one player's Cantr is dying is actually my Hoorah! I can finally pay attention to what is going on around me without my characters being smothered every fifteen minutes!!.

But I also feel I have enough wisdom to know that people are more fascinated by the MM portion of MMORPG existence, so as a staff member I must concede as best I can to help maintain that end of the game as well.



Wenn Sie Angst wollen, sehen Sie die Deutsche Lande an! Der Verfall ist ganz schlecht dort, ja ich fühle daß ich nichts zu hilfen machen können.

[psymann]

For me, I am bordering on love and hate for this game and have been for some months.

Doug mentioned we should be looking both at attracting new players and keeping old players.

In terms of attracting new players, I will mention this game mainly as a quick oneliner and a link in a instant messenger chat. At the moment, half my one-line is apologising in advance for the lag instead of saying how great it is. The lag is the one and only significant aspect of the game which prevengtes me from advertiseing it to friends as much or as effectively.

In terms of keeping old players, that is harder to do since, as Doug again mentions, people naturallly get bored of things after a while. However, here is my list of things that, if changed, would improve my playing experience and keep me keener.

1) Fix the lag. Easier said than done, I know.

2) Give me more minutes a day to play with. That way I can afford to lose minutes to the current lag, whereas now the lag means I keep getting distracted while a page is loading, so by the time I come back to it, my next click costs me 5 mins each time. If I have more minutes, I might also have time to speak to newspawns when they turn up, which I'd happily do - if it wasn't "wasting" my minutes. In the last few days I have been on leave and really tried to put a lot more into my characters and get back into Cantr a bit. And each day, I've run out of minutes. I've not done that much, but just moving around, tidying up things, looking to see who people are and who's new - all that just eats my minutes up.

3) Improve the user-interface to require fewer clicks to do basic things. Again, this also helps combat the lag without actually fixing the lag itself, but would be a good change anyway. For example:
a) The fact i have to click to leave my project before I can leave a building. When I click to move to a different building/locaation, why can't the game just break me off my project for me? Having to click on the cross, and wait for it to load the events page, and then click to go back to the buildings page, is a complete waste of time.
b) The fact there are no handy buttons for "drop all" or "take all" - instead I have to keep typing in numbers everywhere when I'm shifting things around.
c) The lack of an "add (<CANTRDESC>)" button on the charview page making my have to copy and paste that text in each time I rename a character.
d) The lack of an "enter" button on a building description page. If I see the name of a building in the event view text, I want two easy clicks - one on that building in the text, and then another on the page I'm taken to to enter it. Instead, I have to scroll down searching the buildings page to find the building I am looking for.
e) Having a button for "go outside" so when you're in some deep storeroom of a building, you can just click to go straight outside to the town without having to click numerous times on location and exit buttons.
f) Putting me automatically onto projects on machines when I set them up, as is done with all other projects. Not sure why the machines are different (eg potato harvester).
g) As well as Hide All and Show All, add Show Last Twenty. It takes ages to show all, and often I only want to see the bit that just disappeared a minute ago.
h) Send me back to the objects page, not the events page, when I drag a resources from somewhere to somewhere else. Dragging multiple resources from the ground to a building requires an extra click each time if you insist on sending me via the events page each time.
i) A bit more drastic - maybe arrange the screen so that the last few lines of the events page are always visible. So you have date details, then char details, then links like events|inventory|location|etc, and then have a few lines of events, and then the rest of your objects page or whatever page you're on. Then you never need to send me back to the events page when dragging/leaving-buildings/etc, and can send me to a page I want more.

4) Make the forum quicker. This forum takes forever to load pages and it puts me off wanting to visit it often. A less active forum helps to influence a less-active game, I think.

5) Keep the changes coming. To retain existing players, a good way is to make improvements. This forum has a zillion suggestions, many of them accpeted, which never make it into the game. We've been saying for something like 15 months that the lag needs improving, but still it's a massive problem. When it takes that long to fix even the major issues, let alone add more minor ones, there are two effects: to make me think there's no point suggesting things because they'll never be implemented, and to think that the game isn't getting better, isn't improving, isn't likely to keep being a great game.

psymann

[Razorlance]

3) Improve the user-interface to require fewer clicks to do basic things. Again, this also helps combat the lag without actually fixing the lag itself, but would be a good change anyway. For example:
a) The fact i have to click to leave my project before I can leave a building. When I click to move to a different building/locaation, why can't the game just break me off my project for me? Having to click on the cross, and wait for it to load the events page, and then click to go back to the buildings page, is a complete waste of time.
b) The fact there are no handy buttons for "drop all" or "take all" - instead I have to keep typing in numbers everywhere when I'm shifting things around.
c) The lack of an "add (<CANTRDESC>)" button on the charview page making my have to copy and paste that text in each time I rename a character.
d) The lack of an "enter" button on a building description page. If I see the name of a building in the event view text, I want two easy clicks - one on that building in the text, and then another on the page I'm taken to to enter it. Instead, I have to scroll down searching the buildings page to find the building I am looking for.
e) Having a button for "go outside" so when you're in some deep storeroom of a building, you can just click to go straight outside to the town without having to click numerous times on location and exit buttons.
f) Putting me automatically onto projects on machines when I set them up, as is done with all other projects. Not sure why the machines are different (eg potato harvester).
g) As well as Hide All and Show All, add Show Last Twenty. It takes ages to show all, and often I only want to see the bit that just disappeared a minute ago.
h) Send me back to the objects page, not the events page, when I drag a resources from somewhere to somewhere else. Dragging multiple resources from the ground to a building requires an extra click each time if you insist on sending me via the events page each time.
i) A bit more drastic - maybe arrange the screen so that the last few lines of the events page are always visible. So you have date details, then char details, then links like events|inventory|location|etc, and then have a few lines of events, and then the rest of your objects page or whatever page you're on. Then you never need to send me back to the events page when dragging/leaving-buildings/etc, and can send me to a page I want more.

As I read your post I realise that I too get frustrated by these quirks and agree wholeheartedly with you, and I've been playing over three years now, imagine what someone new to the game must be thinking. I know some like dragging resources taking you to the events page are fairly new but others have been around as long as I can remember. Maybe a quick suggestion on the interface topic might be needed.

[Idriveayugo]

I am here and you will know that I am the best and will hear me.