Welcome Newbie,in this game you will be able to do.. NOTHING

[Genevieve]

The game is designed for players who have more on their agenda than just gaming.

RP my dear, RP

[Cogliostro]

Yes, roleplaying is swell. But see, the mechanical part of the gameplay has an important role too in helping that roleplaying along, helping players imagine and become immersed in the fantasy.

It's not so easy to articulate the exact problem with the current system we've arrived at for now. But we all (older players) know it only too well:

- Your character has been wronged by some town leaders and is furious. Then as a lone rider of modest armament he declares a bloody vendetta against the wrongdoers. What do they do? They laugh. Everyone knows bloody vendettas are impossible in Cantr. Note: not "risky" and "difficult", but impossible and the idea itself is laughable to the intended victims of it. That is wrong, and is a major fault in the design of the current system.

- You want to be a thief and steal some stuff. You can't. Everything is locked, and you can't "sneak in at night", there is no such thing. Maybe you got very lucky and someone forgot to lock something, so you grabbed some loot and you ran from town. Newsflash. You can't. They have cars and bikes, and three crossbows per person; you are dead before you next log into the game. The town leaders laugh, they enjoy this, and who will deny that this pattern repeats itself hundreds and hundreds of times with various newbie characters? They have no chance, not even a little one. This is wrong.

- Scenario number three. You are a vile criminal in the largest boat in Cantr, armed with the best weapons in the game and stocked up on healing food. You sail past some established towns, thinking about your next moves. Attack and plunder, you decide! Newsflash. You can't. Despite all the equipment you have, you just can't do anything to your enemies. And it's not because you're "alone against a town". A town might really be two-three active people, who form the resistance you need to overcome, and that's it. But even with the best gear, you haven't got a chance. Do you see the problem we're getting at? The best equipment in the game is basically worthless gameplay-wise, it just does you no good. Yes, we all know, what you need to do is drag key people away onto your ship, kill them, get their keys, and then loot the town. This is wrong. (equipment should enable you to do new things, shooting townspeople enmasse with a crossbow from a protected bunker on your ship, getting into an exciting 1-on-1 sword duel with the town leader and actually winning, being badly wounded and crawling away to the safety of your ship and actually being able to undock and sail, without magically having dinghies and other boats insta-docked to you like bees to superglue. Sure, these things would be the abilities of a new combat system, which for now is only a dream. But can't we move in that direction by steps? Instead of always "keeping it as it is since we're used to that")

As always, the scenarios here have nothing to do with my desire to play good or evil characters, or with my own personal failings and good points. They're about how we can make the game interesting, nicely unpredictable, and create an environment where dramatic things can actually dramatically happen. Instead we've arrived at a place where we made stuff as safe and as reasonable as possible - for the older characters, and done nothing for our newbies who want to have fun also, and should be able to have fun. They should!

[Genevieve]

- Your character has been wronged by some town leaders and is furious. Then as a lone rider of modest armament he declares a bloody vendetta against the wrongdoers. What do they do? They laugh. Everyone knows bloody vendettas are impossible in Cantr. Note: not "risky" and "difficult", but impossible and the idea itself is laughable to the intended victims of it. That is wrong, and is a major fault in the design of the current system.

Umm, lol. Something like this did happen, not two in-game years ago And the person who tried to kill the leader of the town? Wow - did, haha. Anyway, all of these changes sound like you want the game to be about fighting/killing/attacking etc when it seems to me the majority of players don't want it to be like that.

However if you find yourself with a very strong character who hooks up with one other somewhat strong charrie, you have a good chance of overcoming even well-defended people. Luck of the draw - because if you are small and scrawny, real life or Cantr, you won't win. But that is part of the fun.

[SekoETC]

I'm not going to read this topic now since from what I glanced at it, it would only make me depressed.

[Cogliostro]

I can say from my own experience of sailing over to the Polish occupied lands, that what I discovered there was a far cry from what I thought it'd be like. Even discounting my extremely poor command of the language, the best way to describe what the mildly populated towns I visited "felt" like would be- like English towns back in the golden age.

You remember the golden age, right? When almost every character in a town is their own unique person, active, interested, and staying a few days you will soon know the names and personalities of everyone. It still happens in the English lands even now, but it's only a few towns now that are still like this.

What a sweet place, that Polish hamlet! I enjoyed roleplaying and getting to know all the people for a few days, upon the expiry of which I was ganked and insta-killed by my new friends, making further research into the "Polish miracle" impossible.

[Chasing Dingoes]

Dingoes, if it was just a misleading blurb, that wouldn't really be such a burning problem. So it's a bit misleading, so what. What advertising blurbs aren't, right? But the bigger problem is that Cantr (as is) fails to support the possibilities that exist in its own vision of itself. It doesn't any more do what it set out to do, in other words. In big part due to how the mechanics work, it's gotten to a point where nothing is really new any more, nothing unexpected has the potential of happening. This has to do with the combat system. It has to do with how real, functional enterprises and shops are impossible to create for players (because there is no automation of buying/selling available, not even primitive kinds). It has to do with how clothing and luxury items have no in-game effect on anything, and are treated by players as useless decor.

I wasn't complaining. Just posting as nothing to do in-game.

I find it interesting how you're alright with falsifing blurbs but attacking some key elements of what i think makes the game great. Maybe I still have the newbie shine on me.

What I quoted above, I read as you coming down more on the power-gaming side of things. I like the fact that Cantr's not a game about winning and I don't think I'm the only one. (Not saying you're wrong and I'm right mind. I know I do. People always sound self-righteous on the internet.) I agree with you about shops being (near) impossible to set up. The one 'business man' I know is failing. The combat system I think is perfect for the game's goals. It allows violence but restricts it from being used as a hack and slash game. The clothes and items... well I'll come back to that.

For me, Cantr seems like an game's RP room with extra features and no game. Our the game is the minimum of making sure your characters have enough food to say alive/aren't mauled to death by animals. The clothes and items are those extras. They don't have to give us clothes. They don't have to give us musical instruments. Houses. Those things can be RPed without game mechanics, game mechanics just gives logic/rules/limits to these things.

For a game like Cantr, it's all too easy to blame the game/devolopers as americans (which i'm not) or americanist (which I am) came to expect game to be a certain way - a way that we can power game... *resists a rant about this spilling in to real life* ...and it doesnt have to be. Cantr doesn't fit that expectation of that which I can understand puzzling and/or boring american and americanised players. It's the lack of goals (set out by the game) that does it mainly.
(...that's a generalisation, I admit. Don't make be mean to me about it or I'll cry.)

I compared Cantr to a rp chat room before and I have witnessed a fun family friendly rp chat become rotton to the core over years. It's because of this I can see chats as a society, changing and reform with each new genration, though the generations come faster online. It's that society that Cantr is about (in my eyes) and not the power gaming/goals. The character devolopment of my characters and the characters around me though our social interaction. It doesn't have to be shocking and dramatic all the time because it just takes away the factor to do this.

But in that aspect it's us that control the game. The PD gives us the tools and limitations but it's down to the cantr socity that is controlled by we, the players via our characters.

I will admit my ignorance of forgein countries. (I'm going to call them forgein as the PC term 'non-english speaking' doesn't stand with me as I know many you type better than native speakers.) I know that the guy incharge of the french dictionary is a celebrity. I know pieces of nothing information like that that lead me to believe that these forgien countries are more likely to be open to this society factor and that's why the Polish (as you pointed out) may be less bored by their characters than the English.

Golly! I wrote a lot. I should have really stopped at not complaining. Anyway that's all my opinion and probably what a lot of people think is wrong with Cantr.
...or maybe i'm right... bound to happen sooner or later

[Gran]

tl; read what I could - and now I'm gonna post some things and flee out of this topic:

First. Suggestions that raise the force of the individual would be actually much better for powergamers (ugly word) than for normal players; The likely answer "No! It doesn't! It'll actualee help people fight off them single-handely". Well, this is true, can happen. Still, how would something good come off a gang of mute raiders in a bunker ship with enhanced crossbows? It wouldn't - and the same guy who was beaten by the gang when he was a weak douche will be now beaten by the gang again. But with bunker ships. And also, no counters to this which are based off "well, it could be something other than a bunker ship" will be accepted, for:

a. I'll try my best to not touch this topic.
b. You should take in mind that, even if it could be something other, that wouldn't change the whole idea.

Second. All possibilities written at the frontpage are possible and obtainable, no matter how cheesy the Marketing Dept. wrote it. It is not the game that fails at offering you the possibility - it is you who sucks at taking the goddamn opportunities. No counters which contain insults to the poster will be accepted, for:

a. I'll really try my best to not touch this topic.
b. It is pure troof.

P.S.Building yourself a character is something that demands vision, skills and patience. Of course, time is also required, as time will pass anyway. But how the time will be allocated is purely subjective - I had sucessful politicians, but I never had to babysit them. As saif by wise Rabma, many many many of us don't give a shit about ticks.

So, this is all I had to say on the topic. I expected I wasn't much self-righteous and... Bye.
...

*FLEEIN' FOR HIS LIFE*

[Dudel]

I see some problems and know some points but am not going to bother as it'll just end in slight irritation like before.

...I guess I'm with Seko except mine isn't depression but instead annoyance.

[Caesar]

Cogliostro

From a lot of your posts and topics I get the feeling that you are;

- Bitter
- Misinformed
- Bad at maths
- Impatient

I'll just finish reading and posting in this topic like this.

[SekoETC]

Ok, now I've read it. Cantr is supposed to be a society simulator. It's possible to get something like a car or a sword or a boat if you work on it for several years even if you do it all by yourself, but people are supposed to build on top of what others have already built, not start a kingdom from scratch. If you want to start a kingdom from scratch, go play Travian or another game like that. Cantr has an established world that's shared by all the people who live in it, and it doesn't create a new location for each new player. It's possible for a person to become the greatest something, but it requires a lot of hard work, some knowledge of how the game works and a bit of luck.

Not all oldbies are familiar with how the game works. There are a lot of people who don't read the wiki and only use the information they gather in-game. Also not all oldbies automatically win the game, or are on the top, although admittedly if you have a lot of experience, people are likely to notice that and trust your characters to be the leader. For example a certain somebody who has been playing for longer than I have managed to build a car before learning that you need to build an engine separately, then worked even longer to build the engine and soon after the car was finished, three thugs murdered this person and stole that car. And they got away with it, as far as I know.

Even a new player can reach a good position fast, if they just spawn in a suitable environment and talk in a way that makes sense. If someone who people (characters) don't know too well picks up all the keys in a location and tries to set up new laws, people are likely to find it unfair, and either tell the person to hand them over, or kill him or her, but if that person has made themselves known and visible before that takeover, they are more likely to keep one's position. Also being over 30 years old helps a bunch. While you're in your twenties, it doesn't matter if you're 29, you still look like a newspawn.

In real life a person can acquire a car and a house easily, but a bunch of people worked to build that house, and even though the car was most likely assembled by robots, a lot of people had to build the construction line, somebody has to keep an eye on it and somebody had to design the car model, invent the materials and building process, there are decades of work to back that up. Also in real life there are cops to take you down if you use that car to rob a store or if you shoot someone with a crossbow or if you kidnap a person and drag them to your house. In Cantr resources (including human resources) are limited, so even if a town leader had keys to dozens of vehicles or buildings, they need to consider with each person "is this one going to snap and hurt others or their property if I give them access to this vehicle/building?" Also in real life people have to work a lifetime, unless they inherit someone or make investments or write a famous song and can live on royalties. In real life you can trust most people not to suffer a heart attack in their twenties, so you can give them a loan because you can expect them to work decades to pay it off.

Also even though Cantr has implementations like a vehicle assembly line, and tools and harvesters to speed up gathering rates, it's not truly industrialized because with every new implementation people have to worry that it's going to "ruin the game" or nerf existing things, so instead of having implementations that make things 10 times faster, we only have ones that make them 4 times faster. And we can't have a cotton harvester or even a factory-sized loom because that would devaluate cotton. And also there's that problem that people can start a miniature project that only takes 1 hour and not use the full capacity of the machine. It would make the game more interesting if people really had to have several kilos of resources before they are allowed to start for example a smelting project. If you didn't have enough material to fill the minimum requirements, you'd just have to use primitive equipment instead. Or it should take just as much wood to heat the oven to bake a single cookie than a whole batch. Then people who produce large quantities at once would have an advantage. I think it's ridiculous that it takes just a few grams of wood or coal to heat up an oven.

Another thing, I've seen newbies trying to start a town and they set their goals far too high. Might have a list of dozens of machines they need to build. People need to learn how to prioritize.

[Joshuamonkey]

"... you can try to play the worlds most famous politician, most feared criminal, most cunning military commander, most wealthy entrepreneur, or most beloved village idiot. Any role you can imagine you can play in this game and the challenge is in playing it consistently, and in achieving the goals you set for your characters individually."

You want to be a thief and steal some stuff. You can't. Everything is locked, and you can't "sneak in at night", there is no such thing. Maybe you got very lucky and someone forgot to lock something, so you grabbed some loot and you ran from town. Newsflash. You can't. They have cars and bikes, and three crossbows per person; you are dead before you next log into the game. The town leaders laugh, they enjoy this, and who will deny that this pattern repeats itself hundreds and hundreds of times with various newbie characters? They have no chance, not even a little one. This is wrong.

That's why you need intelligence...

The reason they come into the world is to work for you for a short time, increase your resource pile a little, and then the player quits and is never heard of again. Let's be realistic, that's what happens to 80% or more of our new players!

I liked this, because it's true sometimes, taking out the exxaggeration, and I'm probably guilty of it. However, my characters are so happy to have a new person that they'll give them a bunch of stuff and make them their partner if they make it past that initial period.

[Dudel]

Just in case you missed this Cogliostro.

The problem I see is that Cogliostro wishes for Cantr to appeal to a more general audience, which is good for its "lively hood" but at the same time... that no longer makes the game "niche", which is what appeals to those that are here.

Rigel's characters were destructive for destructive sake... there was nothing to them, nothing tangible and simply put, he was hacky slashy.

Cantr should NOT discourage his behavior, however, yes. The issue with Rigel was NOT his in character behavior but his OOC. In character Rigel's characters are just as acceptable as yugo's and Shadowwolfs... also, they are needed. (If one is gracious enough to remove the CRBing he constantly did)

HOWEVER, again again again... the rudeness OF THE PLAYER created bias to himself. Rigel WAS his characters, which isn't bad if your not a total prick who thinks he's god's gift to man. That type of CHARACTER BEHAVIOR, is 100% okay by me but when the PLAYER becomes NOTHING MORE then a "rouge", as you put it and I'm using the word on a loose scale, it is irritating.

"Newbies" can be,do,etc, whatever they wish with Cantr provided they STOP AND THINK... but the real draw is the community.

Look if you REMOVE the community and the forum... Cantr, as a whole, drops a GOOD CHUNK of its fun. It becomes a bland boring and generally blank RP room with little tangible things to do... BUT when you start making things more "tangible" and "real" you start to lose the original idea of Cantr. It starts looking like a typical MMO + RP and, quite frankly, I do not wish for this.

And these "Doll House" comments are straight up annoying me. Cantr is NOT all puppies and rainbow farts! I've heard and seen via third party, some NASTY STUFF.

Also, Satrap (I'm resting my firm belief that you are indeed this character... which is cool... to a point), plenty of characters encourage others to participate in more then "gather, sleep, repeat" but it gets SOOO TAXING on a player to greet EVERY FREAKING NEWSPAWN, visitor or random dude that "pops up" in your character's town. Sometimes you almost wish they'd not have spawned at all as the risk is they are 50% likely to just try and take everything.

I've a character who full heartily gives of himself and the things he's obtained. Sees no value in them... its just "stuff"... and really, a lot of my characters are like this to a point. "Its just stuff"... Cantr isn't about "stuff". HECK, I have even left thieves etc go provided they returned healing and regular food... clearly I wasn't using the rest of that "stuff".

Most new players have a mentality from other games that the "stuff" actually means something. In Cantr... only the foods do, really. Everything else... kinda pointless, unless you/your character fears or wants death. (Weapons and Shields)

Also, that is kinda your point. "Stuff needs a value"... but then you make "getting stuff" EVEN WORSE! Now one ACTUALLY NEEDS THIS "stuff" or the game don't work and (See FTO) THAT'S BAD!

Cantr is a very niche game and will not appeal to most gamers. It is more, and should be advertised as such, an RP "vassal". This means it should be posted on PBP sites or other locations where its "about the RP".

Problem is even among those groups, as I did that at one time, you get the "Oh this is a game" mentality... while the "other thing" was actually RPing. The thing is, though, that Cantr and its community DO NOT advertise themselves as actual games... at least shouldn't. (Neither should FTO)

Also, I'm "one of those" that likes FPSs and "Hacky Slashy" games... I play Western RPGs and some JRPGs... as well as some racing, etc.. I'm all OVER the place... and AS A GAME, Cantr DROPS its hat and says, "Whats gaming?" However, there isn't REALLY a game so much an RP environment. Which is slightly contradictory to my "Cantr and FTO are games comment" but... that comes from people saying "its about the RP" and not RPing.


Short
1) Cantr, on the simplest of levels is a game.
2) Cantr drops the "I'm a normal game" once the player engrosses themselves in the "world" (AKA: Ignoring ticks, etc) but still sits on its "You need healing food etc, micromanage" basics.
3) This is difficult for people who have never done this... so they quit without trying as most are NOT used to "I'm not a normal game" but once they do, it becomes an addiction.
4) Cantr is slow paced. Sometimes a "sleepy person" is just not playing today. Slow paced is not fun for most "gamers".
5) The Cantr front page EXPLAINS ALL THAT!
6) Being a prick shouldn't make the game "more fun" but should also not be restricted and/or discouraged.

[Drael]

As a society simulator, cantr does okay. it could use some tweaks even there, to stimulate economies and other aspects of society (such as clothing individuation, art etc).

As a role-playing vehicle, which most people enjoy it for, it could also use some tweaks, to make it more open mechanically.

It is unfortunately, somewhere in between those two, and rather closed mechanically. In addition the combat system prefers gangs of stealth clickfest attacks. Which really isnt preferable for either of the above.

But, it is still the best game for either of those. And I love it despite its flaws, always will. Yes, cantr has flaws. No doubt, the suggestion area is a testament to this.

But unfortunately the staff are stretched. Unless your willing to help out, progress on new ideas is slow.

And fortunately, there are options for the bored player. You can be a mangled idiot and cause trouble. You can steal stuff. You can be part of a aggressive tribe and kill all humans. You can travel and trade. Or you can RP and develop relationships. patience, opportunity and perservance. In the end, the greatest goal of cantr is bigger than being a leader. Its being a leader who makes culture, who makes history...

[Caesar]

Why be 'born' knowing a goal? You set them along your life. You spawn with a base personality, and it is slightly altered as the people surrounding you interact with you, along with your goals.

Why be the best when you can be the silliest, most horrible, most naïve, the strangest?

Or even without personality.

There is so many possibilities even still that I'm going crazy.


Note; I just woke up, please don't be confused.

[TheSupernatural]

As a player who joined about a week ago, I'll agree with saying that you can't really do anything as a newbie... I have 5 characters, some spawned in nice places, some not so much. One of the characters is supposed to be on an Esperanto island, but everything is in Spanish except the interface... ay ay ay!

I'm gonna still play though, and while I'm not too patient Cantr doesn't require much work day to day