I start to think people rather have chosen dictators

[RedQueen.exe]

I think an additional problem within the game is that we have almost no well-played evil people. Characters that are "evil" usually are just the type that take an opportunity to kill someone for their stuff if they get the chance and that's it. They don't plot, don't build up a force of loyal minions... heck, there are too few loyal minions to be had. The lack of any real danger or threat in this world has turned it into one big RP chat room, that includes the need to occasionally click on "start harvesting potatoes"

That's the problem when you leave stories 100% in the hands of players. A few will be talented in creating interesting conflict with depth, but most of us just muddle along based on the game's incentives. I doubt that will ever change because it's considered a good thing, not a problem, by most.

I suspect you're right and I'm really starting to think I'm one of the few people that is bored out of their mind by mud/dung fights and swimming in potato paradise.

The problem with those incentives is the only main incentive appears to be to get stuff. What do you do after you get stuff other than sleep half the time?

[Pure_Dunga]

You aren't. Don't worry about that.

Revolution is on the horizon. Somewhere. I'm sure of it.

[RedQueen.exe]

Maybe if we can make enslavement a little easier, more likely. I'd like to see plenty of danger and more power struggles, but not necessarily more people getting killed. Nobody likes losing their favorite characters and that, I suspect, is just another reason people are so eager to stomp out any sign of strife in its infancy and rarely participate in it themselves.

People need to stop giving up and killing themselves off rather than being captured too. I had had one of mine captured relatively recently and I decided to play with it and try to keep my character alive. It turned out to be a very interesting experience.

I suspect the capturers are just as much to blame here. RP with your prisoners people! Don't just lock them up with menial work for years on end!

[Diego]

It's exactly like in real life. Your average Joe is raised to believe in the ideal of democracy, but the notion of the power of State in the hands of the largest mob seems instinctively off-putting, so Joe is likelier to trust a single (reasonably respected/wise) person to make decisions unilaterally and wield authority absolutely. It's a lot like having a parent throughout life.

[Chris]

Nobody likes losing their favorite characters and that, I suspect, is just another reason people are so eager to stomp out any sign of strife in its infancy and rarely participate in it themselves.

Yes, definitely true. It took years of playing for me to get some of my characters in their positions. I am going to let some newspawn make trouble based on a whim? No, I'm not. With the combat system and locks and dragging, my character's doom can be sealed in a matter of seconds. So I will look for any bad tendencies and eradicate them.

Frankly, drama means work. I like to check in a few times a day. I don't want to scroll through pages of dialogue because an argument. Being in a war means work. It's exciting, but it becomes like a job.

[Pure_Dunga]

I can see where your coming from with saying 'it feels like work', but surely it would be more rewarding for you and better serving for the game if you only had two or three characters who you could invest 'smart game time' in rather than seven or eight that don't get finer attention due to overload.

It's frustrating to look back over old forum posts and see talk over war and major societies then click into my characters and see they've been hit with a pillow by someone whose major contribute to the game is *giggles*.

[Peter]

Then again, I've lived through some of these wars and they were just as boring to the "people" as being hit by a pillow.

I also think the game is too slow compared to other games. I also play CoD which is ofcrouse totally different, but also very popular. The speed of the game makes it popular. The problem is when a couple of people make a plan, it takes like 1 hour to discuss the plan, and there you go. You, player, has to wait for days till the machines, items and resources are in place to start unfolding the plan. In the meantime you discuss the plan another 5 times till you get very bored of it and start doing something completely else like hunting down a running newspawn. In CoD that would take 5-10 seconds in cantr that would take 5-10 days (approximately). Frankly I don't care, it's a nice change from running around non-stop shooting.

But after 3 days of discussing the new plan it gets kind of boring. Then waiting days or weeks for things to finally start rolling... I understand why people leave at some point.

If you browse the forums for old wars, don't forget these old wars were written in a "few" lines but took 1000 days.

[Cwalen]

For a slow paced game like Cantr it's a hell of a balance, a 60 year old charter has 800 player days invested in it. Five punks with good weapons can end it almost instantly if they are well coordinated.

Getting five people to coordinate is a major issue, equipping them is the work of months, and having them all operate in the same time frame is not short of a miracle.

Un checked, they can arrive in a town, hit everyone five times (once each) and the town is all but destroyed. Perhaps some survive the first day and have a chance to respond. Might take 7 or 10 to have a complete clean massacre and wipe out everyone before they can respond. Then there are the people inside, and if even one can get a radio message out, well as Chris points out, anyone who doesn't want to die at the hands of a rampaging mob will do all they can to remove the mob.

Being able to drag anyone who survives the initial onslaught into a vehicle to be killed at leisure just makes the maths worse.


Having a max of 15 charters makes individual charter death less impactfull, and if the statistics I have seen that the majority of charters in Cantr are less than 40 years old, we are only looking at a loss of 400 player days for most of the kills. From the towns that I have seen, assuming one or two elders, a few middle aged folks, a bunch of zombies and some relatively new spawn, a murderous mob could wipe out three or four thousand player days in minutes.

Armed revolution does not seem to be a viable alternative to subservience, the difficulty of raising a mob and the necessity of others to combat it not to mention the lack of return from doing so (the mob would be lucky to be able to break too many locks before the counter attack arrived)

Passive aggression (withdrawal of labor) doesn't effect dictators, as discussed above.

Seems like moving on and attempting to establish more egalitarian societies is the only real alternative. Thankfully there is lots of room to do that in.