How Disapointing, Cantr Fails in a BIG way

[El_Skwidd]

I'm not claiming to know a lot about programming or servers or whatever, but I know that in Cantr there's got to be thousands of notes and keys. If part of the lag problem is that the tables are getting too huge for the server to handle, implementing a way to destroy notes would at least help the problem, right? I've done some (amateur) php/MySQL work in the past and it shouldn't be super hard to work in.

I know this risks losing what history and literature the game's accumulated to newspawns and other mindless-destructive types, but it was just a thought. Also, I know it's been suggested a million times before, I just wanted to add it into the conversation.

[marol]

In my personal opinion currently lags are not such a big pain, except situations when someone wants to see complete list of events when being in crowded location - this generates very high load for the server and impacts others. Event list paging is under consideration.

[Sunni Daez]

I read a couple of pages here, skimmed the rest... so my 2 cents..

Cantr player numbers are falling because the game keeps getting more and more things added, thus becoming harder and harder for a new player to understand without a full manual. Honestly, cantr was more fun, when you HAD to RP to get anywhere... now a large portion of what is made, is made with so many steps, and no in game manual of how to... for those of us who are lifers... well, the changes came slowly.. dealt with one at a time..so we don't see the change so much.. but imagine yourself being brand new to something you've never seen the likes of... most people don't want to waste time on something they find to complicated.. games are suppose to be fun, RP is supose to be fun... not need an instruction book.

secondly, when someone new does happen to put the effort in and becomes frustrated.. they come into the forum and post the issue they have.. suddenly they get attacked, and told cantr is run by volenteers..and basically.. told if they don't like it then leave... accept it as is and don't say anything... told to search before they post, this has already been discussed... Told their opinions are pointless.. and most of the time... though staff are not rude about the way they put it... it is a cold factual statement. No feeling or empathy. (ie..you may have made the statement 100 times.. but you may be saying it to someone hearing it for the first time)

From a players point of view.. they know it is a game, they know it is run for free, they know staff is volenteer.... but the players are people none the less... the players ARE the game.. without them, cantr dies... remember that too..

[marginoferror]

I agree that some parts of Cantr are unacceptably hard to understand. I don't think this is quite the same as "complexity" - a game can have strategic complexity and not be hard to play if that complexity mirrors the complexity of real life - but complexity in Cantr is a problem because things are so arbitrary and unrealistic.

Rough edges of the game like how docking works, not being able to cancel projects, having to drop or hand items one at a time, not being able to destroy notes (or anything else), the completely retarded hunting and fighting systems... really all sorts of things about Cantr immediately put off new players. And as well they should! These things are broken. I was put off too, and if I had learned about them right away, before I experienced the good parts of Cantr, I would have abandoned the game months ago. It's even hard to get explanations of these things in-game from other players, because they break immersion so much they're difficult or uncomfortable to explain in-character.

These problems break immersion and even make it more difficult to roleplay - because nobody knows how to roleplay in a world where things that should logically be trivial are instead arbitrarily impossible.

Another problem is that "rewards" in the game - that is, increasing your character's capacity to go places and do stuff - requires wealth, but wealth only requires time and not roleplaying or even much player interaction at all. Cantr has placated players by giving them over a dozen characters each, but that doesn't solve the problem. It just means a lot of characters are asleep all the time, because they don't have to be awake to get any of the game's rewards.

You can say, "the game shouldn't be like that, it should be roleplaying-focused", and maybe it should be. But then you should be playing a MUSH. Incentive structure is crucial to a game, and if you don't have one then you might not even have a game - you might have a collaborative writing project or a sandbox.

We need to look at ways to make it easier to adventure when you're young, and easier to roleplay when you're working. Currently if you want to, say, smelt ore, it's best to do it indoors. This is fine, but then you can't roleplay because you're away from everyone outside! Why don't buildings work like ships docked to shore, where you can talk to people outside from the inside? Or maybe there could be an option to open or close the blinds (or maybe you have to build blinds and windows separately before this option is available).

There should also be more things about the world to roleplay *about*. A day and night cycle, a lunar cycle, rain, snow, winds at sea - even if some of these things don't have direct game effects, it would be something to spark small talk and make roleplaying easier. It's not easy or very satisfying to roleplay in a featureless room.

Cantr needs a lot of work. I think players would be much less likely to leave if there was any sign that problems would be addressed and ideas developed. Certainly, I would be more likely to recommend the game to my friends if I thought it was developing in a positive direction. But the accumulated cruft from years of being broken has made it very hard to fix important parts of the game, particularly with regards to the economy, and there don't seem to be any active programmers at all. I applied to ProgD months ago and haven't gotten so much as an acknowledgment PM or email (and yes, I sent it through multiple channels after I learned mail was broken). What are the prospects for this game without any positive change on the horizon?

[Tiamo]

A very good analysis, marginoferror.

Maybe it is time for Cantr III, a complete redesign of the game, performed by a team of experienced game designers, and realised by some of those ProgD applicants. Reading through the forums i notice quite a lot of people who applied for ProgD but are still awaiting any response.

[DylPickle]

http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3743

Just in case you two above (and others) haven't seen it, there's the "roadmap" for "Cantr III". Of course, it was being discussed when cantr player numbers were rocketing skywards, and there were all sorts of going ons happening in the world. [/quote]

[Surly]

I applied to ProgD months ago and haven't gotten so much as an acknowledgment PM or email (and yes, I sent it through multiple channels after I learned mail was broken). What are the prospects for this game without any positive change on the horizon?

On behalf of the Personnel Department, I would like to apologise for situations like this. Your application has now been processed, and I am very aware it should not have taken so long.

On that note, I would like to say... slow forums and no email server = very slow application processing. I have a full-time job, I don't have enough time and patience to wait for several minutes for forum pages to load. Moving the forums to a different server would be a great help to me... but then I'm one person, and the time taken for a programmer to move everything probably detracts from the needs of several.

Glad I'm not a programmer.

[marginoferror]

Glad I'm not a programmer.

I'm glad I am, now. Thank you for taking care of my application. It may take me a while to get up to speed, but I look forward to getting some work done.

[BDubya]

I think a major problem with Cantr is newspawns are going where they are not wanted. If newspawns go where they are wanted more people will be accepted into the Cantr world and want to play.

Now how you get newspawns to go where they are wanted is beyond me....perhaps have Cantrians have babies or something.

[Arlequin]

We players should be encouraged to turn our main area of interest into a Cantrian social experiment, then write/blog about it. Some information restrictions could be cleared for that only purpose.

I.e.: As a wannabe writer I've got a brainy literary blog. If I ran an 'experiment' about the use of poesy to reinforce or subvert the hierarchy of power, I'd need to be sure that I won't hit an information restriction while describing it.

For many purposes, it would be handy to be able to publish blank maps that illustrate the region that is talked about. No roads, no irrelevant locations, no resources, no other islands, just a piece of green with a few towns stamped on it, so the reader has a visual clue of the spatial context.

[Money]

I dont see why you have to be born as a child. I understand that it has to be realistic and all but frankly we have swords and cars in the same world without guns.

[Solfius]

We players should be encouraged to turn our main area of interest into a Cantrian social experiment, then write/blog about it. Some information restrictions could be cleared for that only purpose.

An interesting idea

[nitefyre]

We players should be encouraged to turn our main area of interest into a Cantrian social experiment, then write/blog about it. Some information restrictions could be cleared for that only purpose.

I.e.: As a wannabe writer I've got a brainy literary blog. If I ran an 'experiment' about the use of poesy to reinforce or subvert the hierarchy of power, I'd need to be sure that I won't hit an information restriction while describing it.

For many purposes, it would be handy to be able to publish blank maps that illustrate the region that is talked about. No roads, no irrelevant locations, no resources, no other islands, just a piece of green with a few towns stamped on it, so the reader has a visual clue of the spatial context.

An interesting idea.

I imagine the Cantr Webzine (http://www.cantr.net/e107) is a good outlet for that, which already has an audience and all that other stuff nailed down. You should look into being a contributor or an editor.

[Solfius]

what I found interesting was encouraging players to blog about the game outside of the official channels.

So we could see a number of independent sites appear all blogging about Cantr.

[Arlequin]

Whoever knows the ezine, knows the game, so for outreach purposes that would achieve nothing.