New Player Question...Relaunch ect.

[Oob]

After what Doug said, I feel quite a sense of satisfaction that I am one of those players that has stayed past my oldest character's 30th birthday. I have to say that I have been quite enjoying Cantr, to date it's the longest I've played a multi-player online game. Even though I'm not really experienced and adept at role playing my characters have been made to feel welcome and part of their respective communities, it's that I've found to be the main reason why I'm still playing - a sense of belonging and feeling connected and part of the game world, for me it continues to bring me back day after day even after the recent extended break due to the games down-time.

I have to admit I almost gave up playing when quite early on one of my characters was killed for apparently no reason, but on reflection I decided these sort of things can happen it's no reason to give up on a game you enjoy! I recently put forward ideas including about possible in-game 'natural disasters' as suggested by others, hoping they might shake up the world and create some added zest to spice things up for the players. I can see better why a reset would be a bad thing and why other suggested ideas have their problems. I'm certainly more informed about the background now after Doug and others have explained more about the history, events and the unseen aspects of the game that helps explain why Cantr is the way it is after its 9 years of existence.

I'm looking forward to the future changes, improvements and enhancements to Cantr that have been mentioned elsewhere, anything to further the open-ended sandbox aspects of the game. Despite having been playing for several months now I'm sure potentially there's likely to be a few more exciting and not so exciting in-game happenings to keep my interest. One thing regarding the game for me though still continues to go unanswered (maybe someone knows?) I imagine Cantr to be a strange and unique place where semi-primitive people inhabit a world having 'evolved' with certain specific developments and technologies but not others (as compared to our real world) what I would like know is can Cantr be a 'free' world to change in ways the players influence or is it ultimately the admins and devs that limit/control Cantr's future evolutionary path?

While I'm at it asking questions and thinking to ask, why are there not many more game worlds around based on the mechanics of Cantr? I often wonder why not. The fact you don't have to be 'in-world' playing for any length of time, being able to log-in play a short while a few times a day like the seemingly ever more popular social network games. Why are there so many 'MUD like' games but not 'Cantr like' games? Why is Cantr not becoming more popular these days? I would love to see more people playing Cantr, hopefully we will.

Edit: I'm missing Cantr, please come back soon..

[EchoMan]

The future of Cantr is under the jurisdiction of Jos and GAC. That said, we tend to have rather open discussions in the suggestions-threads and of course the opinion of the players count.

[Doug R.]

While I'm at it asking questions and thinking to ask, why are there not many more game worlds around based on the mechanics of Cantr? I often wonder why not. The fact you don't have to be 'in-world' playing for any length of time, being able to log-in play a short while a few times a day like the seemingly ever more popular social network games. Why are there so many 'MUD like' games but not 'Cantr like' games? Why is Cantr not becoming more popular these days? I would love to see more people playing Cantr, hopefully we will.

Simply put, Cantr is the first of it's kind. Lots of people have compared Cantr as a text version of Wurm Online, but having studied Wurm's many, many rules, there's actually not a lot in common. Wurm has many social rules, while Cantr only has one fundamental rule. Today there are no less than 5 Cantr-inspired spin off games in development. Each of these games take the parts of Cantr that their creators enjoy the most and mix in non-Cantr elements. If even one of these games becomes successful, Cantr will have left it's mark in gaming history. After all, imitation is the biggest form of flattery.

[Marian]

The pros of a wipe for me would have to include a smaller world, with a resource allocation that made sense with the much larger variety of resources now. A second mirror server would be pretty cool, same with a cataclysmic event of sorts... But it's not exactly necessary. Starting in a primitive area of the existing world doesn't really have that same thrill to it, I find, because if you're like me you'll get tired of other language groups, or you'll realize that your spawning out in the boonies means one less potential spawn to bring a developed area back to glory. It'd be nice to see places lots of places with 15+ populations and strong regional rivalries again. I just think there is simply too much land for the current player base right now.

Yeah this is pretty much how I feel. I don't understand why the world is so big, I guess originally Jos assumed there would be a much, much bigger player base? But the 'spreading out' effect has definitely been hurting the game for a long long time.

As far as starting from a clean slate goes, I realize even today (well, if the game were up) it's possible to hop on a ship and go waaaaay out in the wilderness somewhere and start from scratch if you want, but it's still not the same. I mean, one or two characters with a whole lot of patience could build a town from nothing, but not a community...I would say you needed at least six active people at minimum for a healthy one, and how many newspawns slowly spawning over how many years would you have to go through to get that? And it has to continue growing even from that or it will just stagnate and fall apart in the long run. (And it's hard to ignore the fact that in the end you're only adding to the spreading problem, like DylPickle said, every newspawn you get is taking one from another town, and no matter how great your place way out in the boonies is always going to be isolated and unlikely to have an effect on the wider world)

But something like Doug's example, but on a smaller island with something approaching the population density of the towns in the old islands, with everyone working together/against each other now, that would be amazing.

...the more and more I think about it, a smallish, pristine island that exists in it's own pocket universe (sort of like the newbie island that used to be talked about, and maybe you could literally only have one character at a time there), would be an amazing way to get the best of both worlds. Or since it's basically 'bonus material' and not the base game you could even do something like make it cost a couple of bucks or like a thousand of those useless voting credits to spawn there each time after the first, would probably cut down immensely on suicidal newspawns

[Pure_Dunga]

Does anyone know how vast the world of Cantr is in comparison to the number of people playing it? I presume it would be impossible to make a world that already exists any smaller, and doubt the programmers and staff could be bothered with the hassle of a 'bonus island'.

Stats which show towns per capita could be misleading as from what I've briefly seen, 'you see 16 people', two days later only two people talked to me, one of them being a newer spawned character than my own. From this I would assume it would be a near impossibility to gauge the activity levels of towns too.

Only way around it I see is for the current crop of players to be as pro-active with their characters as they can. Be it as a revolutionary or a neanderthal, bigger number of well played characters will improve the game as much as new lands and game changes ever will.

[Chris]

There is a quick and easy way to make the world smaller: increase travel per tick. If all travel speeds are doubled, the world size will be cut in half, relative to characters' ability to move through it. If you want to move continents closer together without changing intra-continent travel, then increase only the speeds of water vehicles.

[Marian]

There is a quick and easy way to make the world smaller: increase travel per tick. If all travel speeds are doubled, the world size will be cut in half, relative to characters' ability to move through it. If you want to move continents closer together without changing intra-continent travel, then increase only the speeds of water vehicles.

I don't know if that would really help, there'd be less incentive to build the nicer vehicles, and it'd be even easier for newspawns to just go wandering off without giving their spawntown a chance. And the issue for me is not really so much even travel time, but all these towns with two or three active people, or no people at all. I'd just like to see people drawing together a little more, but I guess there's really no non-drastic way to force that.

I presume it would be impossible to make a world that already exists any smaller, and doubt the programmers and staff could be bothered with the hassle of a 'bonus island'.

The whole conversation is just theoretical, but IMO fun to talk about...heck, maybe we ought to make a whole thread about it, everyone likes to play armchair game designer or be all 'wouldn't it be cool if more towns were like this' and we've got to get our Cantr fix somehow! But I think the 'alternate universe' wouldn't actually be that much trouble, there was more than one thread with serious discussion about the newbie island for awhile (IIRC the staff had actually started to work on it at one point) and this would be pretty much exactly the same thing, though of course aimed more at rewarding and keeping the interest of the more serious or longterm players.

[nateflory]

Simply put, Cantr is the first of it's kind. ... Today there are no less than 5 Cantr-inspired spin off games in development. Each of these games take the parts of Cantr that their creators enjoy the most and mix in non-Cantr elements. If even one of these games becomes successful, Cantr will have left it's mark in gaming history. After all, imitation is the biggest form of flattery.

Yep, I'm currently writing my own little Cantr-inspired game, mostly because I missed it terribly during the downtime, and partially to re-learn PHP again and possibly help with ProgD once I get back into the swing of coding.
Love, love, love the text-style Roleplaying!

[Armulus Satchula]

Simply put, Cantr is the first of it's kind. Lots of people have compared Cantr as a text version of Wurm Online, but having studied Wurm's many, many rules, there's actually not a lot in common. Wurm has many social rules, while Cantr only has one fundamental rule. Today there are no less than 5 Cantr-inspired spin off games in development. Each of these games take the parts of Cantr that their creators enjoy the most and mix in non-Cantr elements. If even one of these games becomes successful, Cantr will have left it's mark in gaming history. After all, imitation is the biggest form of flattery.

I'm sure one of these days, someone will create something ;D

[ROTFL]

I have another question.

Is it practicable to cut down level of hunger all of the chars? (to 0 % )

Many people have no time to play every day or try when the game is open. A few days in September, November and December – I think it's easy way to lose some chars.

[CrashBlizz]

Even if they had no food on them at all they'd still last 20 days. Assuming that people who don't log in hadn't for 5 days before the hack, then missed the 3 it was up, and won't for 5 when it comes back - that still gives them 7 days to log in. Thats way more than enough oppertunity.

[Pure_Dunga]

We're back. Brilliant.

Time for everyone to be as active as they all possibly can!

[Surly]

The future of Cantr is under the jurisdiction of Jos and GAC. That said, we tend to have rather open discussions in the suggestions-threads and of course the opinion of the players count.

For clarification, it's the jurisdiction of Jos and the GAB. The GAC was purely an advisory body of former GAB members who wander back around from time to time, although it has now been abolished in favour of the shiny pink emeritus title as modelled by myself.

[Pure_Dunga]

Sorry to reignite a dead thread, but I didn't think what I had to say merited a new one.

As a new player I would just like to say that I'm really enjoying the game, barring a little inactivity of the general populous my characters are getting enough individual interaction to develop their personalities.

I'm really enjoying learning in game histories ect in the actual game rather than what I've read scanning through the forums. Hopefully a few months down the line some of my characters will have influenced someone enough to be mentioned in these forums too.

[Surly]

I don't think 4 days is that dead, to be honest, considering this forum is 7 years old!

It's a shame how much in-game history has been lost due to people like me not writing enough stuff down on IG notes. I apologise for that, just make sure you don't make my mistake!

Welcome to the game, glad to hear you're enjoying it.