Apathy

[Piscator]

@Seko: It's about relative rarity. Oil can only be found in 58 of a total of over 9000 locations, while alcohol can be made from resources that can be found in every second town.

[viktor]

there are some things i wish to respond to in this thread.. or at least fully respond but have to hold back to prevent from in game info leaking out before it's more wide spread in game knowledge...
that being said
city states ya some of them are on the coast, some of them because the sea is thier main trade, some large countries may have a city on the coast and a great inland expanse.
pirates on gallens and rakers are not too big of an issue if a keyholder is wakeful enough to lock the harbour or keep it locked and open up for visitors(pet peeve for a few sailors i;ve read in other threads), this does not mame a town impenetrable but, to bypass a harbour, pirates are not likely to take a few small ships to dock, that is more likely in a war with a goal on the particular target rather than a pirates goal of pleasurful killing and looting, too risky.
that and if somoene wants to pull up and detach a few ships to hit you.. if you wake you see them and everyone can be alerted.
we need to keep sails on ships so interisland trade is feasable, imagine if the only useful means of interisland trade were HALF loaded unrigged rakers , half loaded so they still move faster thn a longboat. not all pirates are just created and out for easy grabs . some have legitimate background stories to become discruntled homicidal sociopaths and same goes with on land wars etc.. i agree many are just pure greed without background but there are some truly legit hostilities. more regards to pirates that i cannot get into more detail though i'd like to
removing cooking from the sea would be a horrible and unwarranted nerf that would have drasticly negative implications in game. i cannot go into great detail on that either.
the spreading and thinning of people is in the power and at the will of the chars/players.
we here mostly english in this topic forget the polish had a country, a large highly populated multilocation nation that. i never saw myself other than maps and documents but if they can do it, why do the english have s much trouble? i don't know what it's status is these days but i know a few years ago(rl time) it was like that. and these two language groups were/are the largest and were/are matched for population which is about half what it used to be. there are some developing countries strugling to flourish and just need the active willing and NON-sociopathic citizens to do so.

[Doug R.]

The Polish home-islands were much smaller than Cantr and Treefeather - they had no choice but to cluster early on, so they had a cultural advantage.

[Joshuamonkey]

I don't see much point in galleons when you could make a faster raker much easier. I've never needed to fit that many people into a boat though. I do think it makes sense for there to be more involved with making it though, perhaps with rakers too.

Rigging a raker completely with sails isn't that easy unless you're a town leader or something with tons of cotton or hemp stored. I had a character make masts and sails with cotton, getting most of it himself, and it took perhaps a decade.

[Doug R.]

I don't see much point in galleons when you could make a faster raker much easier. I've never needed to fit that many people into a boat though. I do think it makes sense for there to be more involved with making it though, perhaps with rakers too.

Rigging a raker completely with sails isn't that easy unless you're a town leader or something with tons of cotton or hemp stored. I had a character make masts and sails with cotton, getting most of it himself, and it took perhaps a decade.

Fully loading a galleon barely slows it down, while fully loading a raker slows it down dramatically. That's the difference. If you're carrying a ton of crap, a galleon is the way to go.

If you have hemp, timber, and oil, making rigging isn't that hard, since hemp and timber can be gotten in large quantities in a few days as can the oil if you have a derrick. Cotton is gathered at less than 1/4 (used to be 1/8) the rate, so I can see how that would be mind-numbingly slow.

[nateflory]

I honestly like goals that take a long time to achieve, because it keeps me interested longer. When I achieve my goals, my characters go to sleep. I have a handful that have absolutely nothing to do right now.

Sadly, all but two (maybe three) of my characters simply lost the will to live lately, because of their goals.
Not so much that they reached them, or that they were impossible, but because me, as a player, suddenly felt that the virtual goals had been done before. (make a boat and sail! done lots, Setup a trade route and sellessly travel for the good of the community! done before. Find love and stuff. Overdone?)

I love the "idea" of Cantr itself, and have invested quite more years than I realized into various characters (looking at my forum join date?!) . But, I also really dislike to be part of the apathy problem by wanting to leave now.

So, sorry to all my characters's friends, except the three I find the will to check once every so often.
Life happened, and I cought the sleeping sickness IRL.
(I couldn't post in dead chars yet since they aren't dying, you food-restockers, you!)
c'est la vie.
Edit: did not mean to whine here or go all Emo, was simply replying to the Apathy thread with my thoughts, perhaps too filtered by the Apathy itself. Oops!

[EchoMan]

Applying your real life apathy to your characters are an OOC CRB. Period.

[nateflory]

Applying your real life apathy to your characters are an OOC CRB. Period.

Ok, that one was worth keeping me around for another week or so, to see if it shakes off.
Well played, sir.

[mikki]

Applying your real life apathy to your characters are an OOC CRB. Period.

Ok, that one was worth keeping me around for another week or so, to see if it shakes off.
Well played, sir.

Talk about devastation! I know two chars that may just lose the will to live if those other two chars.. were to die on them! You must stay to keep them alive. *nods*

[RedQueen.exe]

Mikki, you need an avatar. But I'm guessing if you don't have one by now, I'm not going to convince you.

I've gone through stretches of apathy, and killed off over half my characters in a fell swoop at 2-3 points, but I still have 4 from around the beginning, and still one of my original 2. I just can't ever bear to click that X and lose 1-2 in particular of those 4, so I went into more of a hibernation period where I did little other than work with those characters. I guess I eventually shook out of it, because now I'm back to 15 and very active. Probably too much so.

[CN]

Mikki, you need an avatar. But I'm guessing if you don't have one by now, I'm not going to convince you.

I've gone through stretches of apathy, and killed off over half my characters in a fell swoop at 2-3 points, but I still have 4 from around the beginning, and still one of my original 2. I just can't ever bear to click that X and lose 1-2 in particular of those 4, so I went into more of a hibernation period where I did little other than work with those characters. I guess I eventually shook out of it, because now I'm back to 15 and very active. Probably too much so.

I did the same things almost a year ago. I ended up going through and just killing off all my characters and leaving only the oldest ones that I couldn't bear to part with just yet. But that was more driven by RL stuff and complications than anything IG. I'm back now, kind of. I spawned a character or two (one to disastrous results =\) and just taking it easy with my small list of characters and attempting to play them to some minimal level of competence at least.

[mikki]

I have had plenty of avatars.. I just don't currently have one, and I'm honestly not all that worried about it. Maybe again soon, I will have another, but not until my computer is fixed!

[Mykey]

I hold my head up because sometimes I mention something that is worth mentiong, show signs of learning and have put more hours than I like to think about, into reading the back forums to find that the idea that I thought was brilliant had been raised five or more years ago.

If and when I get a reasonable conceptual map of this space I'll get right back to tilting at windmills, at the moment I am convinced that what we need is less conversation, a good game plan, and a few hundred hours of good programming.

I agree with soooooooo much of what you say... That being said, I do disagree with less conversation.... The problem is never the amount of conversation, it's the complete lack of action to go with it.
A good game plan and a couple of hundred hours of good programming would help Cantr along a very far way. But, I'm thinking it's doomed. Why? Well many reasons.....I'll try to only list a few, and not repeat myself and others too much, though I'm sure I will. I'll probably just go on and on and become unintelligible midway through.

Cantr is very discouraging to the hard-core gamer types, due to the extremely slow pace of events. Not that it doesn't have quite a few. It does. But only 1 in 10 people I recommend it to will even flirt with it a week, before quitting. Strategy driven gamers just really have no stomach for the insane amounts of RPing going on, especially when it has nothing to do with issues beyond personal 1 on 1 relationships. Not that there is anything wrong with the small scale interaction, there isn't. But it does choke out large scale interactions.... When you are scrolling for 10 mins through whispers or paragraphs of stuff that really has nothing to do with your character you miss a lot and can get tired of even trying to skim. I've seen pages fill up within 10 mins with nothing consequential being said, except character "a" loves character "b" with some flirting and mild antagonism.

It's all really depressing. I blame it on a few different things, the decline of western civilization not being the least significant... a lot of characters seem to be sex driven...
Society at large is mostly neglected, much like modern life. I think there are many more problems with cantr that are psychological in nature rather than mechanical. I don't see how you can program something interesting or engaging to happen. With the low populations per location, the extremely small attention spans and the tried and true dictator model of governing, nothing will ever get very shaken up. I also think the need to not break the CR and the whole idea of one of your characters plotting to dominate or subjugate another one of your characters in a town 2-3 locations away limits all the choices/possibilities very much. How can I possibly ever talk a few towns into confederating and expanding, when almost everyone has more characters where the expansion would be going on? Especially if no one cares.... You simply can't get to the point of large scale cooperation, a town maybe 2 or 3 is about as good as it can get. So very few characters have any grand political or social aspirations.... Power is almost never shared from what I've seen, goals never discussed only announced.

Everyone goes into herd mentality with very few capable shepherds. No characters outright questions anything, either because of fear or apathy. Because of RL, time is the biggest issue no one has the time or the will to really shake things up. A few things could be done programming wise to help remedy this situation. But only a few......

The death of politics and the lack of time to work things out, makes this game incredibly boring. Unless you just really enjoy playing average characters with average lives, that operate on the 1 on 1 scale.Or, you`re a fan of the raiding pirate model. Very few cantr players get off on power... Obviously the ones that do, do everything they can to keep as much of it to themselves as possible. Luckily for them, their jobs arn't hard, no one really cares... I'm just glad I've only been playing a month maybe I'm completely wrong..... All I can say for sure is, this game is nothing like it was on day 100,300,700,1200, 1500....At least not socially. It seems for every improvement made in the programming, there was an equal devolvement in society from more people to less. Which makes for very poor sociopolitical structures. Are there any good and really different places to be? Or do they all look very similar to everyone else, like they do to me? It's really too bad.....there is nothing new under the sun.... makes for a boring world.

[Mr. Bones]

I hold my head up because sometimes I mention something that is worth mentiong, show signs of learning and have put more hours than I like to think about, into reading the back forums to find that the idea that I thought was brilliant had been raised five or more years ago.

If and when I get a reasonable conceptual map of this space I'll get right back to tilting at windmills, at the moment I am convinced that what we need is less conversation, a good game plan, and a few hundred hours of good programming.

I agree with soooooooo much of what you say... That being said, I do disagree with less conversation.... The problem is never the amount of conversation, it's the complete lack of action to go with it.
A good game plan and a couple of hundred hours of good programming would help Cantr along a very far way. But, I'm thinking it's doomed. Why? Well many reasons.....I'll try to only list a few, and not repeat myself and others too much, though I'm sure I will. I'll probably just go on and on and become unintelligible midway through.

Cantr is very discouraging to the hard-core gamer types, due to the extremely slow pace of events. Not that it doesn't have quite a few. It does. But only 1 in 10 people I recommend it to will even flirt with it a week, before quitting. Strategy driven gamers just really have no stomach for the insane amounts of RPing going on, especially when it has nothing to do with issues beyond personal 1 on 1 relationships. Not that there is anything wrong with the small scale interaction, there isn't. But it does choke out large scale interactions.... When you are scrolling for 10 mins through whispers or paragraphs of stuff that really has nothing to do with your character you miss a lot and can get tired of even trying to skim. I've seen pages fill up within 10 mins with nothing consequential being said, except character "a" loves character "b" with some flirting and mild antagonism.

It's all really depressing. I blame it on a few different things, the decline of western civilization not being the least significant... a lot of characters seem to be sex driven...
Society at large is mostly neglected, much like modern life. I think there are many more problems with cantr that are psychological in nature rather than mechanical. I don't see how you can program something interesting or engaging to happen. With the low populations per location, the extremely small attention spans and the tried and true dictator model of governing, nothing will ever get very shaken up. I also think the need to not break the CR and the whole idea of one of your characters plotting to dominate or subjugate another one of your characters in a town 2-3 locations away limits all the choices/possibilities very much. How can I possibly ever talk a few towns into confederating and expanding, when almost everyone has more characters where the expansion would be going on? Especially if no one cares.... You simply can't get to the point of large scale cooperation, a town maybe 2 or 3 is about as good as it can get. So very few characters have any grand political or social aspirations.... Power is almost never shared from what I've seen, goals never discussed only announced.

Everyone goes into herd mentality with very few capable shepherds. No characters outright questions anything, either because of fear or apathy. Because of RL, time is the biggest issue no one has the time or the will to really shake things up. A few things could be done programming wise to help remedy this situation. But only a few......

The death of politics and the lack of time to work things out, makes this game incredibly boring. Unless you just really enjoy playing average characters with average lives, that operate on the 1 on 1 scale.Or, you`re a fan of the raiding pirate model. Very few cantr players get off on power... Obviously the ones that do, do everything they can to keep as much of it to themselves as possible. Luckily for them, their jobs arn't hard, no one really cares... I'm just glad I've only been playing a month maybe I'm completely wrong..... All I can say for sure is, this game is nothing like it was on day 100,300,700,1200, 1500....At least not socially. It seems for every improvement made in the programming, there was an equal devolvement in society from more people to less. Which makes for very poor sociopolitical structures. Are there any good and really different places to be? Or do they all look very similar to everyone else, like they do to me? It's really too bad.....there is nothing new under the sun.... makes for a boring world.

I agree, and no there really isn't any places in Cantr that are different. I liken societies in Cantr to about stone age quality, except they have radios and such and it's more like a bad post apocalyptic movie. Like the Postman with Kevin Costner or something like that. And you are right, it seems like everyone wants to take the easy route, drop a note with five laws on it and have a ruler who's word goes. There are very little in the way of a sound government structures and practically no judicial systems in the Cantr World. You'll find the occasional formal institution with a mission to help others, but they are rare. It's almost like if a bunch of five year olds ran the world, this is how it would look. I'm not knocking the players, I'm one also, but I just know we can do better. If we took the time to develop some serious societies, the role-play opportunities would be massive compared to now.

[Comy]

Cantr is very discouraging to the hard-core gamer types, due to the extremely slow pace of events.

Maybe it's just me, but I kind of feel like Cantr isn't meant for hardcore gamer types. It's meant to be a slow-paced game for more casual gamer types. Not to say that hardcore gamers can't enjoy Cantr, but obviously they won't if they're looking for a hardcore gaming experience. Cantr appeals to pretty small subset of people; it's just not for everyone. Yes, I realize that the game is in a decline, but I don't think that necessarily invalidates what I've said.