Top 10 things that annoy you about Cantr II

[joo]

Actually I haven't had any problems with lagging since I got my new 16 mbps broadband connection. Does anybody know where the actual server is located?

[MikeH]

My number 1 is pirates and bullies. I have become so discouraged by these groups who come into a town, stir things up, do what they want, and drag people off or kill them.

I've spent so much time developing a character, RP'ing them, and then BOOM, the character is dead because someone is having "fun" being a pirate.

It just makes the entire game so pointless, and I've now gone through this three times, and I just want to give up on Cantr completely, I'm so discouraged.

Why would you hate pirates and bullies? As long as they RP decently, you should be happy. That's why you have 15 characters.

Because, like I said, I spend a lot of time developing a character, building relationships, and investing in the town, and then out of nowhere come the bullies -- regardless of whether or not they are well RP'ed, and many of them are not -- and they can quickly and easily destroy everything, or take my characters life, or even worse, lock him/her up for years (BOOOORRRRING).

It's lame and it happens too often and there's too little defense against it.

And what's worse is that some of them say "well, this place was so boring until we got here" but no, no it wasn't. It may not have been exciting to THEM but to me and others in the town things were going along just fine and they are more an annoyance than "interesting".

And there's almost nothing you can do to stop them.

And so, a character I've invested a lot of time in, developing, growing, relationships I've built, the directions I was leading that character in -- all gone in a matter of a day, with no real way to stop it.

All that time, all that RP'ing, gone, with nothing to show for it.

And it's happened to me three times now, essentially. It's made me less enthusiastic about RP'ing my remaining characters, frankly, because why should I spend any time developing them when there's no guarantee the same thing won't happen to them?

Totally discouraging. If I wanted to play D&D or WoW, that's what I'd do.

[*Wiro]

Make sure the town is supplied with crowbars for everyone. That way you can easily free people that got captured in a vehicle. Also have locks on every building and 2 or 3 on a "main building".
The main building should have enough food to survive.

I don't see how being attacked in a town is stupid. I would love to be in a town and to get attacked by some pirates.

If you think the happy life and way is the only "good roleplaying", then I certainly disagree. It can't always be good and happy flower flower cake cake yay.

And in real life there are bullies and murderers too.
And with Cantr being not even that far developped yet, it's more than normal that people are killing eachother for the heck of it.

If you get "silent attacked", as in, no response at all.
And with that I don't mean them not talking, as I would love to see some silent ninja assasin, but someone who just doesn't do a thing but attacking.
He or she should use ** to express actions. etc
But yeah, if you see any of these silent attackers, I suggest talking to a PD member about it.
Those kind of things ruin roleplaying fun.

[NaruShadow]

My number 1 is pirates and bullies. I have become so discouraged by these groups who come into a town, stir things up, do what they want, and drag people off or kill them.

I've spent so much time developing a character, RP'ing them, and then BOOM, the character is dead because someone is having "fun" being a pirate.

It just makes the entire game so pointless, and I've now gone through this three times, and I just want to give up on Cantr completely, I'm so discouraged.

Why would you hate pirates and bullies? As long as they RP decently, you should be happy. That's why you have 15 characters.

Because, like I said, I spend a lot of time developing a character, building relationships, and investing in the town, and then out of nowhere come the bullies -- regardless of whether or not they are well RP'ed, and many of them are not -- and they can quickly and easily destroy everything, or take my characters life, or even worse, lock him/her up for years (BOOOORRRRING).

It's lame and it happens too often and there's too little defense against it.

And what's worse is that some of them say "well, this place was so boring until we got here" but no, no it wasn't. It may not have been exciting to THEM but to me and others in the town things were going along just fine and they are more an annoyance than "interesting".

And there's almost nothing you can do to stop them.

And so, a character I've invested a lot of time in, developing, growing, relationships I've built, the directions I was leading that character in -- all gone in a matter of a day, with no real way to stop it.

All that time, all that RP'ing, gone, with nothing to show for it.

And it's happened to me three times now, essentially. It's made me less enthusiastic about RP'ing my remaining characters, frankly, because why should I spend any time developing them when there's no guarantee the same thing won't happen to them?

Totally discouraging. If I wanted to play D&D or WoW, that's what I'd do.

When you think about it logically, being killed by pirates is no worse than dying from a heart attack. You still end up putting in all that hard work for nothing right? But if anything, death by pirates is better. It's a much more exciting death.

[SekoETC]

I think the idea is that when you get killed by someone else, you can't make the decision to die, unlike when you decide to click the X or starve your character to death or ask PD to kill it. Your plans are ruined. But then again, this is not a single-player game. Anthony Roberts once told me he would rp anything thrown at his character - isn't that the mentality a true rp should possess? A good rp must accept that sometimes things don't go as you planned. Not even bad guys always get what they want. In fact it's mostly the bad guys who have their plans ruined no matter how long and hard they worked to make them fool-proof.

[Doug R.]

...why should I spend any time developing them when there's no guarantee the same thing won't happen to them?

Why get up in the morning when there's no guarantee that you'll survive the day? You could get randomly shot, hit by a car, have an aneurysm burst in your descending aorta, or have a heart attack. It happens to millions of people every day.

You develop your characters for the same reason why you don't spend your life hiding in your bedroom - because life is about the present. You live your life every day the best that you can, and you play your Cantr characters because you enjoy it. Sure, they may die, and it hurts, I know it hurts, but does that nullify all the fun you've had developing them up until that point? All you're doing by not developing subsequent characters is depriving yourself of fun because of a long-shot maybe (you've had a real run of bad luck).

[Tangential]

I have mixed feelings about this. Since I have characters on both ends of the spectrum, I can see both sides sort of. I guess I’ll say that if you’re a leader, you automatically run the risk of being killed every day you lead. And those chances greatly increase if your town borders a sea. The thing about pirates/murderers is that it is –almost- futile to reason with them unless the pirates allow themselves to be reasoned with. But this is, I’m assuming, pretty rare because, firstly, pirates/murderers do not care about the laws while vigilantes think they are above the law. Secondly, they just don’t care about you unless you have something they need or want or even tempting to have.

I also want to highlight the difference between the popular conception of pirate attacks vs. murders. Pirate attacks are only “exciting” when the whole town gets involved, allowing massive RP possibilities to be played out. Murders or gang ups, on the other hand, are usually silent and very little RP is usually done. Murders are the annoying ones, but they happen, unfortunately.

All you can do is learn from it. Ask yourself why were you murdered? Did you piss someone off? Did you trust someone you shouldn’t have? Did you naively walk into a trap and didn’t plan a back up? Did you make enough impact on people that if you were gone for only a few hours, people will start to wonder? Would people care enough to give their lives up for you?

Food for thought. It’s really time to make a pirate’s/vigilante’s life harder.

[SekoETC]

I wish my leader would get (or more like would've gotten) killed by pirates, it's far better than losing faith in what you've worked for all your life. If you get killed defending your town, you'll be remembered as a hero (provided that anyone survives to tell the story) but if you just hang around long enough to go crazy and have your town fall apart around you, you bet no one's going to remember you after you're gone. Or even worse if you're remembered as a person who mucked everything up.

[joo]

I wish my leader would get (or more like would've gotten) killed by pirates, it's far better than losing faith in what you've worked for all your life. If you get killed defending your town, you'll be remembered as a hero (provided that anyone survives to tell the story) but if you just hang around long enough to go crazy and have your town fall apart around you, you bet no one's going to remember you after you're gone. Or even worse if you're remembered as a person who mucked everything up.

Hehe, that sounds a lot like one of my characters...

[MikeH]

I think the idea is that when you get killed by someone else, you can't make the decision to die, unlike when you decide to click the X or starve your character to death or ask PD to kill it. Your plans are ruined. But then again, this is not a single-player game. Anthony Roberts once told me he would rp anything thrown at his character - isn't that the mentality a true rp should possess? A good rp must accept that sometimes things don't go as you planned. Not even bad guys always get what they want. In fact it's mostly the bad guys who have their plans ruined no matter how long and hard they worked to make them fool-proof.

It seems like it's happening more often. Or at least to me. Occasional mischief, fine. But over and over again? Frustrating. And a bit boring.

"Oooh, the big bad guys dragged me into their ship and sailed off, making me their slave. Or taking turns beating up until I die."

Not what I signed up for. And maybe this does mean it's time for me to quit, and I ought to RP natural deaths for my other 10 charries.

[joo]

"Oooh, the big bad guys dragged me into their ship and sailed off, making me their slave. Or taking turns beating up until I die."

Not what I signed up for. And maybe this does mean it's time for me to quit, and I ought to RP natural deaths for my other 10 charries.

There's plenty of opportunity for RPing a situation like that. In fact, I'd imagine you could RP more than in normal situations. I remember I had great fun, um, talking to my fellow captive and making escape attempts when one of my characters was imprisoned. You also plead with your captors, or try to trick them by gaining their confidence.

[*Wiro]

Roleplaying may be the key to surviving.
I saved my life various time by roleplaying and lying in the game Werewolves.

Don't think "Oh I'm gonna die!" when you are put in a vehicle with a lock and they stab you to death. Think up some possibilities to survive. Are they strong? Then don't fight back. Are they weak? Do you have a crowbar? Are you well-defended? Attempt to escape.

So yeah, I agree with Joo. Best moments to roleplay are when strong hate or strong love is involved.

[MikeH]

Make sure the town is supplied with crowbars for everyone. That way you can easily free people that got captured in a vehicle. Also have locks on every building and 2 or 3 on a "main building".
The main building should have enough food to survive.

I don't see how being attacked in a town is stupid. I would love to be in a town and to get attacked by some pirates.

If you think the happy life and way is the only "good roleplaying", then I certainly disagree. It can't always be good and happy flower flower cake cake yay.

.

Well, #1, it gets old. Maybe you think it would be fun the first time, but over and over again, it gets old. At least to me. There's so much else to Cantr than that, or at least there could be. And it takes SO DARN LONG in Cantr to accomplish certain things, so that having a character killed for some pirate's jollies just is frustrating.

And, #2, who said I said the happy life was the only good roleplaying? You can have drama and tension and unhappiness without bullies or pirates killing people. In fact, honestly, most pirates are pretty weak RPers in my opinion. Unoriginal.

[MikeH]

Roleplaying may be the key to surviving.
I saved my life various time by roleplaying and lying in the game Werewolves.

Don't think "Oh I'm gonna die!" when you are put in a vehicle with a lock and they stab you to death. Think up some possibilities to survive. Are they strong? Then don't fight back. Are they weak? Do you have a crowbar? Are you well-defended? Attempt to escape.

So yeah, I agree with Joo. Best moments to roleplay are when strong hate or strong love is involved.

Well, I obviously disagree. After more than one of my charries has been put in that situation, it isn't all that interesting or exciting anymore. And frankly it is really limiting in terms of RPing, not at all as great as you are making it sound.

If I were interested in RPing a slave or a captive, I'd go surrender to someone. It's more than a little dull, especially given how limited the expressive range of pirate/bully activity has been. They all seem to do or say the same things.

And it's just TOO EASY for them to mess things up, and way too difficult for people to defend themselves or escape.

And so your character ends up being or doing something you never intended or wanted, and it's happened to you many times before so you're bored. Or if you are killed, it's frustrating. And this is a game -- it shouldn't be boring or frustrating.

[DylPickle]

I have a character who's been taken captive during a raid. It's actually some decent roleplaying, and I have a feeling it'll improve as we go.

I've played prisoners numerous times, and have had characters killed both in pirate raids and all out wars. I know what you mean when you're stuck with captors that are weak in RP. It kind of sucks. But when you're in a situation with some serious players, it can be absolutely amazing.

What's worse than having a weak player behind a CAPTOR is a weak player behind a CAPTIVE. There are mainly only a few ways to die as a prisoner.

1. You put your character to sleep.
2. Your character is boring and doesn't interact with captors, therefore captors no longer interact with the prisoner.
3. Your character annoys the crap out of people, making their play unenjoyable. (those damn knockers!!!)
4. Captors are weak roleplayers (AND/OR different language group) and kill your character without a word.