Philosophical Goal of Cantr; Self-Serving or Superb Society

[returner]

I've been really conflicted as of late.

I originally joined this community four years ago, or thereabouts. I had a different mindset then, I was a teen and played World of Warcraft on the side.. I wanted empires, armies, I wanted to take over the Cantr world and leave behind a trail of bodies.
Of those characters who were not murderers, they were sailors, leaders, inspirators.. experts, religious zealots, all self-serving and all with one goal - the self.

A few things have changed since then.

I returned (the returner) with a new mindset, new goals. Cantr was a novel to me, and I was a character in the novel. There was a distinct change in attitude here; whereby I was no longer the Novel, but rather one small element of it. My characters no longer are JUST self-serving.. now, they serve their society, themselves and the overall Novel that is Cantr.
When I lose a character, I don't care.
Sure, it's a disappointment and sure, being alive is enjoyable.. but the enjoyment is had in contributing to the Novel, that future characters will be impacted by my character's life and death. Even my own future characters may come across the history of my old character.

Now this is the bit I want to talk about.

What exactly is the direction that Cantr is going, and which way are GAB steering it?

I see two distinct directions. The first is a self-serving RPG in which everyone has a car, everyone rules a town, everyone is a pirate and everyone is in charge.
The second, is a true society simulator, with a dash of RPG to give it a uniqueness.

Many of the players and staff are steering it in the former. And this is where I am disappointed.

We have something great here, a world in which we can create a novel, create an ever-lasting story. Yet we are throwing it away so we can all have that car, or that van, that ship or that building, that iron or that weapon, that victorious kill or that status, we want to be feared, or adored, loved, hated.
And we can still have that!

Yet any suggestion made in the direction of building Cantr as a society simulator is shot down by both the players and staff. There are countless examples. Their reasonings are petty and selfish. 'Oh, it's already too hard to do one thing'..


So I ask the players and staff; which direction would you like to see Cantr go? Which direction do you believe it is going? And do you believe Cantr will be around for much longer if we keep going that way?

[randognsac]

I see your point but...
If you want a society simulator then everyone wanting that car or leading a town etc.. is the ultimate simulator. Everyone for the most part is self serving at least in America. For better or for worse that is life.

[Marian]

What exactly is the direction that Cantr is going, and which way are GAB steering it?

I see two distinct directions. The first is a self-serving RPG in which everyone has a car, everyone rules a town, everyone is a pirate and everyone is in charge.
The second, is a true society simulator, with a dash of RPG to give it a uniqueness.

Many of the players and staff are steering it in the former. And this is where I am disappointed.

I can see your point about some of the players, but I'm not sure where you get that idea about the staff. Pretty much every change made seems to be aimed at either encouraging or forcing cooperation by making it harder and harder for loners to accomplish anything. And even if I complain sometimes, this is a good thing - a lot of characters do act incredibly selfishly and seem to see themselves as the star of the show, and it's so common I don't think it can all be excused as simply RPing them that way...it may be a player issue. Not many are willing to do a quiet, unassuming job for the sake of helping a community, or even see the value of a community at all.

Conflict can be useful and good for shaking things up, and some towns NEED to be shook up, but the 'leave a trail of bodies' mindset is disastrous for the game as a whole. Characters with history and roots that have been developed for years with the (sometimes OOC but still useful) goal of being part of a community that will help to nurture the development of other characters are completely wiped out for the sake of a brief thrill for what is usually a shallow player with one-note characters at best, if they even bother to RP at all.

The way I see it, it's easily possible to play pirates and even psychopaths that encourage RP, but that means focusing more on the 'story' you're creating and less on the goal, like taking time to actually work up to becoming evil in a believable way instead of just spawning that way, and actually interacting with your victims..if you're going to kill them, at least have the courtesy to make it interesting! Maybe even let one escape now and then to spread the word and a little panic around...but of course all this requires effort and a break from the powergaming mindset of 100% efficiency so very few will ever bother.

[SekoETC]

It's a bit problematic to play bad guys who encourage rp because they might run into defenders who just hit and hide in buildings without rp'ing anything. I think it would be kinda cool if people could post somewhere if they're bored and wouldn't mind a character of theirs getting kidnapped, killed or enslaved just to make things interesting. You're not allowed to post stuff like that. So even if you had a bad guy who wants to create an experience for others, a memorable kidnapping episode or even a memorable death, there's a high chance that the victim's player will be someone who can't appreciate it. I've had someone thank me for giving their character a good death and there was one who was a sort of a slave to one of my character and when they encountered again, she hoped to keep my character alive so that he could heal up and take control again. (But he chose to die instead.)

[Piscator]

The first is a self-serving RPG in which everyone has a car, everyone rules a town, everyone is a pirate and everyone is in charge.

It should be pretty obvious that a RPG without NPCs can't be designed like this. If everybody was town leader, there would be noone to lead. That's one of the reasons why you have 15 character slots. You can play a king or a pirate or a ralley driver even though most of your characters are just common people. At least that's how it's supposed to work. The game mechanics don't exactly favour being a craftsman or a farmer.

Yet any suggestion made in the direction of building Cantr as a society simulator is shot down by both the players and staff. There are countless examples. Their reasonings are petty and selfish. 'Oh, it's already too hard to do one thing'..

Could you give an example? I think the latest implementations all aim in the opposite direction. I know that it has been different in the past, but I'm curious what exactly you're refering to.

[Marian]

Could you give an example? I think the latest implementations all aim in the opposite direction. I know that it has been different in the past, but I'm curious what exactly you're refering to.

He's still annoyed about his 'make cars take 10x the amount of resources' suggestion being rejected, I'm pretty sure. He sees the availability of vehicles as a problem apparently, though I still don't see how OOCly limiting travel and trade possibilities would improve RP. Transportation and communication is kind of important for regular people with regular jobs, too, and 'society simulator' does not always have to equal 'medieval fiefdom simulator'.

[returner]

Could you give an example? I think the latest implementations all aim in the opposite direction. I know that it has been different in the past, but I'm curious what exactly you're refering to.

He's still annoyed about his 'make cars take 10x the amount of resources' suggestion being rejected, I'm pretty sure. He sees the availability of vehicles as a problem apparently, though I still don't see how OOCly limiting travel and trade possibilities would improve RP. Transportation and communication is kind of important for regular people with regular jobs, too, and 'society simulator' does not always have to equal 'medieval fiefdom simulator'.

Haha, not annoyed, but it certainly was the straw which made me go 'Hang on.. somethings up here'.. The 'aroma' of the replies smelt distinctly of a similar attitude, 'it will cause ME more effort'. 'It will disadvantage small towns'.

Yes, it -will- disadvantage small towns. Of course! That's the idea! The undeveloped (third-world) countries of our planet don't live a beez-knees, lavish lifestyle. They're a third-world country for a reason. Most of Cantr is and should be like this. There are some developed towns which would have the capacity to build the cars which I suggested.

There is a more sinister issue at hand though. Once you, or a town, has built the car, or Galleon or what ever.. that's almost it. There's not really anything more advanced than that. And hell, it wouldn't have taken that long to make either. Rubber, iron, steel, glass... Two bike's worth of resources, four people, and you could have a car or van in about 20 or 30 days.
So coming back to the 'sinister issue', once there is nothing left for a town to build, or work on, what do they do? Die out.. unless there is drama in the region, or they spread to other towns, they will slowly drop off. 'Sleeping sickness' will spread. And slowly Cantr dies.

In almost any given town in Cantr Island and Pok Island, there are atleast 5 vehicles (generally speaking). Of that, 2 are motorvehicles. In some towns, you'll find 10, 20 and more motor vehicles.

Personally, (and that's the key word), I think it's too much, and too easy to make.

My biggest hate is the whole 'oh it's not realistic' and 'cantr isn't supposed to be realistic' arguments. I've seen many people on here argue both in favour of their idea. This is why I made this thread - which is it?? RPG or Society-sim?! Which one is predominant? You can't have them both, and expect it to balance (because currently it isn't).


Bear in mind, Cantr came from Jos' lego society. He simulated a society through lego, and when that reached breaking point (no more lego blocks) he opened up Cantr.

Perhaps we should also refocus our vision to match his own.

[EchoMan]

Maybe you should stop focusing on building a vehicle, and instead focus on building a vehicles as a tool to build societies?

[Doug R.]

Your argument about cars is not just limited to cars. Cantr is an open-ended game with a closed-ended tech tree. Blaming it on the cars misses the forest for one tree. It is absolutely true that the technology has hit the ceiling. It is absolutely true that players that now play Cantr as primarily as a simulator as opposed to an RPG are having a tough go of it. The key to getting the simulation back into Cantr is not making things even harder to build (which is just an artificial inflation of the ceiling), but the progressive introduction of consumption, which, until fuel was implemented, was entirely lacking. Three of my characters are now obsessed with getting oil, and so should every character out there that owns a motorvehicle and actually uses it. If the players adjust to this new fuel culture well, we can incrementally add more consumables into the game, creating more jobs in the supply and manufacture industries.

[Piscator]

My biggest hate is the whole 'oh it's not realistic' and 'cantr isn't supposed to be realistic' arguments. I've seen many people on here argue both in favour of their idea. This is why I made this thread - which is it?? RPG or Society-sim?! Which one is predominant? You can't have them both, and expect it to balance (because currently it isn't).

If you word it like this, I don't think both aspect are as irreconcilable as you make it appear. We can very well have a society simulator and a RPG at the same time. It's just that you will have to play different roles than you are used to from other games. Instead of being a warlord, high priest, emperor, master assassin or whatever, this game should be about playing shop keepers, craftsmen, city guards, farmers and cooks, in other words, everything that's usually a NPC's job. This is the basic idea behind Cantr and that are the areas we should focus on to make them fun to play. Only if the backbone of society works, all the fancy conquering, plotting and general making history will be truely satisfying.

Anyway, to wrap my rant up, having a working society and roleplaying are far from being mutually exclusive. It will just not be the WOW kind of RP.

[Doug R.]

Exactly. What I see happening for a long time now is that with the simulator aspect of Cantr having reached a terminal state (nothing to advance to, no needs to be met), the RP aspect is also declining because the sim people are losing interest. RP only works if there's something to RP. With the sim backbone eroding, there's less to roleplay.

So yes, we are very much aware of the problem. Someone just suggested that fires (that just burn wood with no output, originally proposed for RP purposes), decrease the aggressiveness of animals. This is the kind of consumption that we need to add to cantr to get the backbone in shape again.

[HFrance]

Only a detail in perspective: a real simulator of society requires to simulate human relations. As this here is not The Sims, where these relations are programmed into cause and effect, but produced by roleplay, we can conclude that the roleplay is essential element of the simulation and differential element of Cantr. And what I like in Cantr is the recognition of the importance of roleplay: any suggestion of implementation passes in the first question: this can be done by roleplay? And the element of roleplay, in turn, is different in Cantr because there is no NPC or Master, and the collective participation, free and multicultural gives another meaning to expression "social simulator", with emphasis on "socially produced".

[Dudel]

Your argument about cars is not just limited to cars. Cantr is an open-ended game with a closed-ended tech tree. Blaming it on the cars misses the forest for one tree. It is absolutely true that the technology has hit the ceiling. It is absolutely true that players that now play Cantr as primarily as a simulator as opposed to an RPG are having a tough go of it. The key to getting the simulation back into Cantr is not making things even harder to build (which is just an artificial inflation of the ceiling), but the progressive introduction of consumption, which, until fuel was implemented, was entirely lacking. Three of my characters are now obsessed with getting oil, and so should every character out there that owns a motorvehicle and actually uses it. If the players adjust to this new fuel culture well, we can incrementally add more consumables into the game, creating more jobs in the supply and manufacture industries.

Yup, yup!

Some things that'll help are very simple and don't require "upping the anti" on making things "difficult to obtain".

Making skills have value is a big one, personally. There is only ONE skill that holds any real weight in Cantr and it is the "fighting skill". People don't care if they are awkward whatever else because its vs the world and not other players. Give skills more of a harm/help rather than make it up to players to arbitrarily make one by indirectly paying more to people who are better. (Klojt has recently been doing this but I didn't see it working to well as most people didn't seem to care.) Character jobs need a value (Like Piscator said about farmers, etc) which could be helped with the skill system being less retarded.

Consumption and better rot. Right now rot is just an irritation. It adds nothing and I've hardly seen items crumble to nothing (think I've seen two items break beyond repair with my playing and that's cause I let them do it). Consumption is SLOWLY being put into the game but, for the most part, I'm not sure how well fuel will work. Eventually people will simply stock pile the stuff however this will prevent people who can't hold the upkeep from keeping or bothering with them. Meaning only big towns/cities/whatever will have said vehicles ANYWAY so "upping the anti" is, indeed, just plains stupid.

There is a suggestion about dissembling stuff via Doug which will help with rot, to a point. Start small with smaller items like the engines, etc rather than buildings.


Personally, I've grown rather bored with Cantr and have been slightly hands off as there isn't much to do beyond personal character discovery and I'm finding that limited to certain aspects due to lacking of in game items/objects/whatever. I've only got six characters and they are most active when I, the RPer/player, am looking for a specific bit of RP. This RP is usually some form of conflict.

The world of Cantr shouldn't be limited to its RPers and should have some mechanical type of strife to keep things from going stagnant but making things more difficult in the manner you wish is just dumb.

You could add a LOT more random things or bump the tech tree up suddenly but this would have a similar effect in that once everything was built, no one would care. And this is where people start requesting "resets" or "Cantr III".



But the main problem(s) with Cantr is/are:

Infinite resources every Tom, Dick, and Harry can get regardless of skill and connections. You wish to force the second, it seems. Forcing the second would only stop new vehicles from being made and instead a shift in ones currently existing, which is good but then things are even more stagnant cause there isn't a point to creating things that take so much to build when they are there already.

Lacking in "need" as everything is built that is needed and the rest is an arbitrary PLAYER want. I've said before that Cantr items are worthless and I, personally, hold no value to them... and more than enough people have said "Your characters only need food" cause its true. The might want a shield in case of violence but the only NEED in Cantr is food. Cantr needs more needs and less wants but at the annoying same time you can't over run players with needs cause then they are playing the SIMs in first person... and that's boring.

No Mechanical strife. This slightly influxes with the flue implementation but once enough has been stock piled only the small areas will have trouble with it.. and then not by much if they have access to wood, potatoes, an oven, a bucket and a still. Disease should have been implemented for this reason though Sneezing is only an annoyance and the eating sickness is due to an inaction and has no cure other than to act.

Short: Once again, returner, you don't understand.

[SekoETC]

When you started talking about skills, it would make experts and skillfuls more valuable if some items could only be manufactured by them. But there should be enough ways to practice to get to the expert level. Having machinery, buildings and clothing require repairing would give people more chances to practice without having to produce more items to a limited number of consumers. If there weren't all the hoarders then things would stagnate.

[SumBum]

I've often wished that skills did more than speed up/slow down production. You cannot have specialized jobs in Cantr aside from char A saying "I want to cook" and char B say "I hate to cook, so I'll let char A do it." I know it would require a lot of (re)coding but I would love to see skills actually hold more value than just rate of project progress. Certainly don't mean to make it impossible for an awkward cook to provide themself with food if no one else is around, but there has to be some way to make professions feasible. I see it all over Cantr that a town might have an appointed "chef" but most people just cook their own food anyway which undermines the whole chosen profession thing. The quality of product is no different if an awkward person works on it vs an expert.

Again, it would take a lot of work on the code side... Some ideas would be that lesser skills produce less or that the items produced deteriorate at a faster rate. I like Seko's idea that some things can only be made by those who are more skilled.