How Perma-Death is Killing Cantr - An Essay

[SekoETC]

I'm sure most people have some characters they would like to get rid of. So those characters could go get involved in conflicts. The only problem is they generally tend to have poor fighting skill/strength. Maybe we should establish critical hits so even poor fighters could sometimes deal expert damage. Irl there's a chance someone could kill a person with a pen, even more so a bone spear, but in Cantr, you usually don't even get past their shield or if you do, they instantly heal with onions or something.

[wichita]

I see two possibilities:

1) Introduce non-player induced conflict.

In whatever form this would take, I can't see it working. First, there is nothing in the game not done by the players themselves, and this would be a radical departure from the game concept. Second, any such conflict would have to be introduced by people who are also players, causing an inherent conflict of interest and all the suspicions and discord that go along with it.

Edit: This does exist currently to a limited extent in the form of animal attacks, and could see another neutral form in weather, however, these are too random and forgettable to drive a story by themselves. They are isolated incidents, not engines capable of driving a long-term plot.

2) Eliminate perma-death.

Players will be more prone to pawn their ring if they're guaranteed to get the ring back in some manner or another. If their investment loses money, and they can't afford to buy it back, they can always find a job to earn cash and save over time. I'm certainly not saying that there shouldn't be consequences for bad investments, just that that they cannot be absolute if we are to expect the players to participate in driving the "economy" of the game plot.

So, if we want players to put their characters at risk, if we want the stories in Cantr to get richer and more engaging, if we want to have any hope of increasing our player base, we need to get rid of perma-death. If a character's player is the only person that can end that character's story, then Cantr will truly open up the limitless possibilities that it advertises. If you really digest what I've said, you know in your heart I'm right. This is why we implemented the near death state. It was something we knew needed to be done, even if we couldn't say why in a concrete way. But we know it's not enough. Let's have the courage to take the next step.

I'm not entirely buying the perm-death argument. Granted, there are plenty of players in the community to whom Cantr is little more than a set of 15 tamagotchi pets, but I believe that is likely a overgeneralization. Look at pirate attacks. When disaster does strike, there are always plenty of characters springing to action to enact justice. If an aversion to perma-death is the major hindrance to action it seems to me that we would see much less retaliation in these situations as people wouldn't risk their characters to go chasing after the bad guys, but rather sit at home and hope the bogey men don't come back. Rather, there are quite a few players who are willing to risk their characters if they believe in the cause.

One aspect of the argument that I do think has merit is that game development has tended toward improving the survival capacity of characters. This is probably because the anti-permadeath community complains more efficiently than the slaughterhouse contingent. Or it's the empathy thing. Either way, between the arguments that energy drinks make it too easy too easy to slaughter a town or that the dire-wolves might kill someone or etc, usw, jne we've tended to give eventually give into the protests and softened the game in the interest of balance. Granted, at least when I was involved, the giving into demand was usually more driven by the feeling that game activity was indeed down more than fatigue of reading complaints. (Writing this, I notice it probably sounds like some of the stress of those days hasn't subsided yet... )

Back to a more academically rigorous tone...

Allowing characters to come back might embolden some, but even if action does spring back it's probably just going to result in an endless repeat of back and forth power struggles. In the end, that doesn't seem like what we're really after in terms of interesting society simulation or role play.

I think your first idea has more merit, and I'll add famine/resource exhaustion and decay to the list. http://forum.cantr.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23170 In my experience, it is the game environment in itself that has best driven the motivation and challenge. Examples include Burgeo, where animal violence drove the development of community when character had to cooperate in order to efficiently survive and advance, and Seatown Forest having the only local source of iron ore, making it easy for them to enforce a monopoly and embargo. Even in the examples where hordes of characters have banded together it's been because they had access to some resource that gave them a development edge and that others outside the group wanted too.

What makes you work harder than wanting to get your hands on that shiny ring? Not being allowed to make that shiny ring in the first place. What happens if that shiny ring gets lost? The drama of getting it back.

But how would you lose your shiny ring in the first place? Someone might take it, but why would they do that when it's just a whole lot easier for them to make their own shiny ring? Unless they're an asshole, sadist or both, the answer is that they probably won't. Thievery and violence takes a lot of work with the current game mechanics. I would play many more violent and mischievous characters if I had the free time and energy to arrange my life for the requisite weeks to be at the keyboard the crucial moments. Maybe that's just me not representing the general populace, though. And we probably don't want to rely on an increase in the asshole player population even if it makes the game more interesting.

In the real world you have the threat of natural disaster and decay to worry about even if the rogues have been dealt with. But weather is a total non-factor in Cantr. Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, blizzards, sandstorms, famines and carnivorous ducks all provide just as much drama as murders, thieves, terrorist bombers and Nazis (aryan or lunar). Perhaps the best part of natural disaster is that it is a perpetratorless crime. Yes, we want to keep the game balance in mind so that we don't have locations getting decimated by storms and famine every other week, but the occasional surprise would probably give us the shakeup we're not getting from the player base.

[Doug R.]

If an aversion to perma-death is the major hindrance to action it seems to me that we would see much less retaliation in these situations as people wouldn't risk their characters to go chasing after the bad guys, but rather sit at home and hope the bogey men don't come back. Rather, there are quite a few players who are willing to risk their characters if they believe in the cause.

It's effective risk management. When bad guys strike, it's in a player's best interest to act. 1) They know that in most cases they'll have massive amount of backup from other good guys. 2) It's easier to deal with a threat when it's present. If you rest on your laurels and let it go away, it can come back when you least expect it, and then you'll be dead. 3) The players are saved social stigma because they are acting as good guys, and because they are acting against bad guys, the element of empathy is neutralized. This removes 2/3 of the barriers to risk, and minimizes the risk for death. So, in a sense, what you see in these cases is close to how characters would play if they were nearly uninhibited.

Allowing characters to come back might embolden some, but even if action does spring back it's probably just going to result in an endless repeat of back and forth power struggles. In the end, that doesn't seem like what we're really after in terms of interesting society simulation or role play.

Isn't that what soap operas (tv novellas) are? They have quite the following. Comic books are basically the same thing: A hero's attempts to repeatedly thwart his nemesis, who always seems to get away at the last moment. How many characters can honestly say they have a nemesis?

Along the lines of nemesis, I'll add to the list of barriers to risk the ease at which characters can avoid it. Don't get along with the leader? The next 12 towns have no one living there, or would die to have your character join their community. There's no incentive to put down roots in tough situations.

[Bas]

I agree that the problem that has been described exists. My solution would definitelly be among the lines on introducing (non-player induced) conflict.

One of the things that is truelly unique to cantr, is the fact that we inherit everything from characters that die. In almost all other games, if a character quits his stuff disappears with him. This gives new players the challenge of building everything from scratch. In cantr we inherit (as in real life) everything from our predecessors. (I have been able to span a character and receive steel sabre, iron shield and a bike within a week.) unlike in real life there are no disasters to strip us of our resources and rot actually is a very slow process.

This I believe ensures that economically there is no challenge left anymore for most of the players. With this challenge gone a lot of the rewards for theft and murder are in fact meaningless. In my eyes we need a way to remove objects and resources from players, and to create a scarcety of resources. This would in a more natural way cause conflict between characters, and solve the described problem.

[Black Canyon]

The argument about resources and lack of rot/decomposition and the economical impact has been going on for a long time. And I don't disagree that it might be a factor in the lack of conflict in cantr. However, back when I first started playing the event that got me hooked was actually an attack on a town by a former guard (and his accomplices) who had a twisted vendetta due to the loss of a loved one. Irrational motivation, yes, but it had nothing to do with resources. The event actually went on for some time, involving some hostages, the loss of some significant town figures, and the ultimate escape of one or two of the bad guys... which then increased the tension and excitement due to the concern that there would be repeat attacks etc etc....

I'm describing this event in order to compare this with a recent attack on a town which was actually performed with much more finesse, more sophisticated development of the bad guy character, and actually provided more entertainment than I had experienced in the game since I started back. Neighboring towns rallied support (probably desperate for something interesting in their mundane and boring lives) and ultimately the bad guy and his crew was thwarted... but with a narrow escape and the promise that he'd be back to retaliate. It was awesome, really. Unfortunately, for reasons I won't go into, I believe there will be no retaliation and no more development of this particular bad guy. I believe that it does have something to do with the stigmatization of our more aggressive, amoral, or downright evil character players. So... where this fits in I'm not sure... but I feel that it does fit in.

[Snickie]

As a member of a town that has very little access to resources that a modernized Cantr town typically has available to it (besides potatoes), conflict is extraordinarily disheartening. This town is, for all intents and purposes, a poor town. Somebody came into town asking for a resource, and when we didn't have it xe broke into the storage and looted everything of value that we had traded for and sailed away, and there was no way to go after xe because wood is a scarce resource and the owners of the only rakers in the town were holed up somewhere, asleep, their keys under their pillows. This pirate was reported to have stolen from other places and ships along the island's coast as well, and the residents of each were equally devastated and helpless.

Rather than a player who was taking risks with their characters, I see a player who was being just as pet-like with their character as we are with ours. The pirate knew the town wouldn't be able to chase back, knew the town was sleepy, knew they were poorly defended. And that's why xe struck there. And that's how I imagine plenty of pirate characters to be in this game, and in real life. Why should they choose to go after the strong guy when the weak guy can offer them just as much loot? Some like the excitement, and those are the ones that typically go down in history. But that involves taking risk, and I do believe it's been made clear that Cantriians don't like taking risks.

It's been said that conflict like piracy will drive players to actually do something with their characters, some kind of righteous crusade in a quest to get back what was stolen. But it was not so in this town. Their weakness and inability to give chase depressed the people and sent them into a sleepy state, unwilling to work to replace what was stolen or sailing away in their reed boats and canoes. Fear of a repeat offense prevents them from leaving ever again -- after all, resources are years' walk away, and what if somebody with a crowbar comes in the meantime to steal the meager leftovers?

Perhaps this incident was part of a minority. Sadly I don't foresee the situation changing anytime soon for that town.

I don't see how either of the solutions listed will change this. Permadeath is not an issue, as the pirate had no interest in killing (why should xe? xe knew we couldn't chase xir) and animals are under control. Resource deterioration would only cripple the town more than it already is. The only plausible solution would be NPC conflict, but that's determined by the flip of a coin or roll of a dice.

We had a rather tarnished copper ring on a primitive island (let's say Papua New Guinea), and then the pirate came and took it for xirself and flew off on Air Force One.

....Probably an overexaggeration, but anyway.
I'm not even entirely sure how this is relevant.
...I'm done now.

[Alladinsane]

I have yet to read it all, but I must say that I am in the minority who disagree's strongly with the editorial.

Since the second message asked that we not focus on details, I will leave it at the generalized disagreement and will possibly revise my comments in a day or two. Regardless, thanks for caring about the game and its welfare Doug, we do need more people who do that.

[DylPickle]

I wish I had time to write out a decent, well thought out contribution to this topic, but I simply don't.

In short:
Perma-death contributed to making cantr unique.
Stagnant old characters that never died contribute to killing cantr.

The game needs vibrancy, diversification, and goal setting to strive.

Conflict leads to vibrancy in the games plot elements. Unfortunately, this game's populace tends to limit the definition of conflict to murder, massacre, thievery and treachery.
Conflict can take the many different forms many people forget, unfortunately. Conflict can include competitive business rivalries, thorough business negotiations, feuds and personality conflicts within towns themselves, factionalism, political ideologies/systems, man vs environment (as mentioned above), man vs scarcity (as mentioned above in scarcity of resources), political races, economic class divisions, ageism, etc. I'm sure many of you that are much smarter than I am can add to this list.

I don't know about you all, but it's very difficult to set goals with new characters. Not because they can have everything handed to them, or because things have grown more complex over the years, but mostly because they have their entire infinite lifespan to figure it out. Furthermore, their birthplace likely already has some impact characters in a variety of fields, taking up interesting positions that a young character might aspire to take over. Only those positions will remain to be filled until the local oldbies decide to kill of their character, are murdered by someone else, or the player gets so bored because they've done everything already that they stop playing frequently and decide to retire the character (most won't even retire).
Limited lifespans would mean that you would actually have to bust your ass to accomplish your goals, and build up relationships that might allow for a legacy. Some people get depressed because they're overly attached to their characters, but those emotional barriers would be easier to surpass if you the end would eventually come. This would give an incentive to interact with more characters and establish your characters legacy. Hire apprentices, pass on an inheritance, etc. And then come to the forum and share the story of your characters wonderful life, and their contribution to the simulated society. (simple suggestion would be that between the ages of perhaps 60 and 80, one would have the active option to end a chars life, and any time after 80 would come down to some sort of standard deviation. Limited lifespans are more important now than ever, with the near-death state in place)

Diversification in play will develop as players have more incentive to set goals and consider different varieties of conflict. More choice in what one can do. More specialization for individual characters. Only half of this comes from game mechanics. The other half comes from player culture. This forum is the focal point of cantr discussion, and the language used here creeps into players' mindsets and into the game itself. While every character may not meet each other within the game, ever player behind those characters meets each other on the forum. Maybe that's why every towns has essentially the same basic structure, culture, and personality.

I'm ranting and I have to go, but maybe this will make sense to someone.

[Alladinsane]

I like the idea of non-player created conflict, but its got to be a bear for the programming crew. All I can see is the possibility of a huge animal population guarding a location that may have an item or person hidden there. It doesn't really work for me, and yes, members of staff might know where this location is so would likely have to recuse themselves from the quest to be trampled by elephants. Any other addition of "Orcs" would have to deal with their aggressiveness and ability to act with at least a semblance of intelligence. Again, I just don't see that happening unless we imprison a few programmers until they create a working NPC system.

The problem with thinking that perma-death and the lack thereof would improve things does not register to me. Every coin has two sides and if that would save the game, then how did it survive and flourish for a while when perm already existed? The inevitable comparison to these two points is WoW... this chart shows that subscriptions are down for WoW. They have never had permadeath... perhaps it just ran its course? I don't know, but I think that isolated variable may not be the key and suspect that the same trend we have seen elsewhere (though more dramatic with the huge hack of a few years ago) is mirrored here: http://www.statista.com/statistics/2081 ... -warcraft/
The same trend seems to be happening with FB games too with a few notable exceptions, almost all of the currently successful are 'new' games that draw a certain amount of temporary interest. I am not a marketing analyst and I know darn well that we will continue to play games on the net, I just don't know which ones are going to draw capital or which of the free ones will survive either. If I did, I would invest and be out in less than a year to enjoy my peak period assets at a nice island in the Bahamas.

I also like the idea of resource scarcity, but don't know how it would appear fair. We know that the slightest hint (even if only imagined) of partiality leads to abandons. In a society simulator, would the lack of a self preservation instinct be accurate? *shrugs* I have always had a belief that arguing that nearly anything in this game is 'realistic' (and we have all seen someone put forth that argument if we are forum regulars) is not 'realistic' on the part of the RL'rs here. Maybe I am too much of an old man, but other than human interaction we are suspending a whole lot of disbelief here often, the examples are numerous.

Ultimately, we know people will burn out and there currently is not reset button, especially since staff does not kill off characters anymore (hooray staff, this was getting abused by some imo)... The two sided coin again (yes I know there is the one in a million chance of landing on the edge) might make us compare what is losing us players beyond factors such as disenfranchisement to just aging and being assailed by RL in ways that limit our gaming time... that attrition seems natural as the examples of WoW and FB type social media games seem to be reflecting.

So what draws new players? Cantr is still unique in many ways, I played a few muds/mmo's as a younger man and they seem to have faded with the exception of a small dedicated core group per game. That may be the future here? I have also seen measures to increase budget fail terribly in many cases where previously free games lose those who played (at least at first) simply because it is free. A few games even asking even 5$ a month were called 'greedy'... I won't go into that deeply, just comment on my observations there. Still, to advertise much has to come from word of mouth or purchasing some webspace to post your popups... we will get some curiosity hits at least. Keeping them may actually depend on the 'empathy' that was addressed in the OP. I also thought that the webzine had some possibilities if it had draws beyond just cantr players... graphics, games, short-stories, and a reliable staff that would meet deadlines. Heck, if I were not such a computer dunce I would volunteer...alas (or is it Allad?) I am unqualified so that dream rests. The balance of keeping the core group and drawing new may come to the conflict of those who like things "like they always were" and those chasing a fresh experience.

Oh, one last thing. Can we force Doug to write more essays? I love the style and conversational ability of his (your!) writing. Whether I agree totally or not, it is always a joy and I hope that a lively debate is stimulated where we do more than talk about whats wrong, but ponder one what we as a community can do right.

Be well

[Bas]

I wish I had time to write out a decent, well thought out contribution to this topic, but I simply don't.

Conflict leads to vibrancy in the games plot elements. Unfortunately, this game's populace tends to limit the definition of conflict to murder, massacre, thievery and treachery.
Conflict can take the many different forms many people forget, unfortunately. Conflict can include competitive business rivalries, thorough business negotiations, feuds and personality conflicts within towns themselves, factionalism, political ideologies/systems, man vs environment (as mentioned above), man vs scarcity (as mentioned above in scarcity of resources), political races, economic class divisions, ageism, etc. I'm sure many of you that are much smarter than I am can add to this list.

I really like this observation. Any game needs conflict to remain interesting, but this indeed need not be lethal conflict. The game system unfortunatelly does not encourage conflicts of other sources. It allows for them certainly, but in practice most conflict comes from the few people who decide to play an evil character, instead of people that compete (non-violently) against each other for economical or political reasons.

[Jaxon]

I definitely agree with you that cantr is boring because there is a lack of conflict. I think a big reason why Cantr is boring is because newspawns are going where they aren't wanted. If a general is building an army, he/she is going to want all the troops he can get. However, at best you can get 2 newspawns a week if your lucky. Granted, not everyone wants to create a character to fight, someone may just want someone to spend time with them, or even just help build up their business/town. However, anyone of these scenarios provides a better chance for a newspawn to develop and enhance the game than a newspawn popping up in a sleepy town of 3 people.

Find a way to help newspawns go where they are wanted.

[Doug R.]

Find a way to help newspawns go where they are wanted.

I agree with that.

[Bas]

It is intresting. For a town leader the most important resource of all is in a way newspawns. This interestingly enough is a resource that can rarely be traded and is hard to get. Any sort of way to make it easier to get newspawns where you want them would require changing the spawing algorithm.

One way I can think of is create a project attract newspawn and let a portion of the newspawns be divided based on the number of people attracting newspawns.

An alternative idea, which sound strange but would be interesting is let characters create an object called egg. (This could cost resources.) Each time a new character should spawn he will spawn either from a random egg or perhaps from the oldest egg in the world. This would create a possiblity to trade and steal such important resources.

I would find it interesting to hear you ideas on this topic, since I believe there should be better ways than the ones I suggest.

[saztronic]

I have to preface this note with the caveat that I've been away from the game for a long while and just got back to it. So I'm not necessarily current on the state of play, how active/inactive people are now, etc.

But that said, I think the premise of the complaint and the suggested causes of it don't ring true to me. I think that if people are bored, or complacent, or too prone to clinging to what they've worked hard to achieve, it may be less that they are afraid of losing their character, than that they are either insufficiently committed to or insufficiently capable of quality role-playing.

The best times I had in the game were when I had active, creative, interesting, quirky characters of all sorts around me to bounce off of. People who were willing to improvise and react and grow their characters in whatever direction circumstances would dictate. Sure I was involved in a lot of fun conflicts, but I also had a blast playing in deserted, bare-resource towns with just 3-4 chars who had a certain groove with each other. Or in towns that were sleepy centers of industriousness on the surface, but had a lot going on between chars or behind closed doors.

It seems to me that if there are less than 1000 people playing now, that's 1/2 or less what there used to be. And the Cantr world seems physically bigger. Less people filling more space, just that many fewer opportunities to run into good role-playing I would have to guess.

Personally, I might play a character who hoards and builds, but if I were attacked or robbed I might go any number of interesting paths as a result... vengeance is easy and fine. But I might have a spiritual awakening and go live as a mountain hermit, preaching the dangers of materialism. Or go slightly mad. Or become an artist. Or turn bitter and hateful, even toward former friends and confidantes.

In other words, it's not conflict that creates story, it what conflict does, how it affects us, how it shapes our destinies, that makes story interesting. Because conflict means change, growth, a widening or narrowing of the field of possibilities in ways both pleasurable and painful. And conflict does not have to mean violence or theft, it can be simply but powerfully character-driven, hell, it probably should be most of the time.

But my guess from your post is that there may not be a lot of that going on in the game currently. If that's so, I doubt it has as much to do with fear of permanent death, as it does with lack of good role playing. Lack of creativity and openness and good, solid thinking about who your char is and how they would/should grow and change in response to stimuli.

Best remedy would be for everyone posting here to do their best to change that I guess...

[jfrizz51423]

I must admit I relate to this. I am one of those people... Waiting and watching the screen wishing for something exciting to happen... Wishing my character would get kidnapped, a villain would take over town, SOMETHING EXCITING that would spice things up! This has been on my mind a lot lately... But then I get to thinking... Hey! I can cause these things myself! I shouldn't be complaining!! But..... Then I get to thinking... Wait... What if my character ends up getting locked up? Or killed? That would be terrible!! Never mind! It's totally not worth it! And then the cycle repeats.

I'm trying to get out of this and take more risks... Because I am finding that although I might lose a character, I would rather say my character had a short lived but exciting as vivacious life then having a boring old person that did nothing exciting in their lifetime. I will admit though I do like having good-hearted characters, but I NEED to have at least one crazy one... And usually more than one. Maybe this is bad but it drives me absolutely INSANE when everyone in the town is always cheery and happy! Ugh! But I often am one of these people in those towns! Lol I think getting rid of perma-death would be awesome, and bring so much more life into the game. If not though, I am trying to take more risks in the game, because I refuse to have anymore boring characters and just let them sleep off! I am making a vow to myself to not let characters die off because things are boring... For now on... I am going to make things interesting!