Number of players reaches all time low

[*Wiro]

I still see newspawns that never wake up, so I'm wondering where those come from. I thought the intro server would stop them, but apparently it hasn't.

[BosBaBe]

I still see newspawns that never wake up, so I'm wondering where those come from. I thought the intro server would stop them, but apparently it hasn't.

Some people I guess are very picky with where they spawn... if they don't like the location they may just never wake them up, and hope they die. Or if they don't have the stats they want, they'll just let them die. But some towns like to keep their sleepy newspawns alive, so they stick around. At least that's what I think it is.

[SekoETC]

^ What she said.

I've seen characters who gain a bit of tiredness before they ever say a word, so it's obvious they tried to drag themselves. I do that too, but I never abandon a character based on stats.

[Cdls]

Agreed, I have some characters who are insanely weak and horrid fighters, yet I still enjoy playing them. Characters don't all need to be hardened tough guy/girl persona's.

The ones I do let sleep and die are either because I find the environment to be lacking in opportunity or it just is not enjoyable.

The stat/spawning system is sort of counter-intuitive when paired with the idea that you can "play who you want to play". Say you get an idea for a character, then spawn it only to see that it doesn't have the stats needed, or spawned in an area that won't allow for it (or even both in some cases). This probably leads to more 'sleeper spawns' than anything.

[BosBaBe]

Agreed, I have some characters who are insanely weak and horrid fighters, yet I still enjoy playing them. Characters don't all need to be hardened tough guy/girl persona's.

The ones I do let sleep and die are either because I find the environment to be lacking in opportunity or it just is not enjoyable.

The stat/spawning system is sort of counter-intuitive when paired with the idea that you can "play who you want to play". Say you get an idea for a character, then spawn it only to see that it doesn't have the stats needed, or spawned in an area that won't allow for it (or even both in some cases). This probably leads to more 'sleeper spawns' than anything.

This. I have had it SO many times where I have an idea for a character, but they spawn with nothing of what I wanted. "She'll be a rogue warrior or something!" She's an awkward fighter. "Well crap. Okay, she'll be an explorer, taming wild animals and bringing them back to trade, that should be fun!" She's awkward at animal husbandry. :/ Now what? Nothing else I could make her do would even vaguely fit with her personality. So that character goes down the drain, because you can't change the characters description and mannerisms after you've already started playing.

[kicking jay]

Perhaps...
Well, we could have skill points which you can distribute among your new character before spawning. However, everybody might start bolstering fighter and strength while having burial as a dump stat.

What if we made it such that the balance of a *player's* characters' starting stats (note, the characters whose stats are chosen by the player; it ignores the stats of characters whose stats the player chooses to give up to genetics and chance) has to be kept, so that if you spawn a tailoring-light, fighting heavy char, the next one you pick the stats of would have to get your overall stat balance back, so that they'd be tailoring-heavier, fighting-light. That way, the overall balance of characters would be maintained.

Now I can still think of several ways to abuse this feature, but hopefully it'd go a way towards put-out newspawns.

[bnlphan]

My favorite character was horrible on skills. At one time I think he had 8 awkwards and 1 expert. Down to 3 now awkwards and 3 experts now I believe. Though one i think was just added by discovering and not improved. It's horrible trying to do most things but he is a trader and has learned to make a nice living with his limited skills.

Let's see just for fun.
I have weak character that hopes to be a politician. So spinning the truth and rhetoric instead of fighting will be his skill.
Another I was hoping to be my first real bad guy pirate type horrible skills so he is just bitter about it and wants to secretly cause as much trouble as he can.
Another is just happy to exist and wants to be a hermit in the mountains...we'll see how that works out.
There's more I've been unlucky on spawning strength and fighting skills but wanted to show you dont have to abandon them...

[Snickie]

I keep a spreadsheet of my characters' relative skill levels (awkwardly-expertly = 1-5) and whether or not they've improved. One of my favorite characters has a skill rating that's just barely above 2.5 (most known skills average to efficient or novice).

[destinysWalrus]

I keep a spreadsheet of my characters' relative skill levels (awkwardly-expertly = 1-5) and whether or not they've improved. One of my favorite characters has a skill rating that's just barely above 2.5 (most known skills average to efficient or novice).

I just made one, now. It seemed interesting to do that.

Apparently my 8 active characters' (discovered) skills average out to 3.1 and my sleepy 4 characters' (discovered) skills average out to 2.8. I counted strength as a skill - with "much stronger than average" as 5 and "much weaker than average" as 1.

I want to do more analysis on the trends of certain skills among my characters, but here and now's probably not the place or time.

[Snickie]

I keep a spreadsheet of my characters' relative skill levels (awkwardly-expertly = 1-5) and whether or not they've improved. One of my favorite characters has a skill rating that's just barely above 2.5 (most known skills average to efficient or novice).

I just made one, now. It seemed interesting to do that.

Apparently my 8 active characters' (discovered) skills average out to 3.1 and my sleepy 4 characters' (discovered) skills average out to 2.8. I counted strength as a skill - with "much stronger than average" as 5 and "much weaker than average" as 1.

I want to do more analysis on the trends of certain skills among my characters, but here and now's probably not the place or time.

I included strength as well. I record starting and current skill so I can see improvement. But I hadn't thought to include average before. My overall starting average for my currently alive characters (I didn't keep very good records of my dead ones) is 3.17 and my current average is 3.39, for an average improvement rating of 0.22. One of my characters has an improvement rating of 0.52 and the rest are under 0.3.

But now we're off-topic.

Although, one might be able to see where the skillmongering could be a problem. Some players like to see rapid (or tangible) skill improvement over time, which Cantr doesn't really offer unless, for example, you spawn in a forest and your Forestry skill is teetering on the edge of efficient and skillful. But that might also be misleading. If players see that that skill goes up right away, they might think that skills improve faster than they really do and be disappointed when their other skills don't improve so much. I dunno.

[Miedein]

There's also the case of characters/players actively trying to drive people out or accidently driving people out of the game. We had an instance in one of my character's towns where someone was RPing butchering an animal and someone freaked out because of the blood and ended up saying a lot of very hurtful things over the radio and the player heard it about his/her character and was extremely upset by the reaction that could and should have been handled better ICly and the player ended up unsubbing because of all the slander over RPing with someone else about butchering an animal.

[Cdls]

the player ended up unsubbing because of all the slander over RPing with someone else about butchering an animal.

Just to clarify, the player unsubbed because somebody was speaking badly about their character over the radio?

[Finchington]

the player ended up unsubbing because of all the slander over RPing with someone else about butchering an animal.

Just to clarify, the player unsubbed because somebody was speaking badly about their character over the radio?

One of my characters was part of this, and nothing nasty was said over the radio - The character was asking for help, as the two leaders were out of town, and needed to explain the situation to the leaders.

[Reaction]

the player ended up unsubbing because of all the slander over RPing with someone else about butchering an animal.

Just to clarify, the player unsubbed because somebody was speaking badly about their character over the radio?

A little off topic, but I just don't get this.

It's an in game thing, let it be an in game thing?
I've had characters killed by Barons, Blackrocks, and Adam Brinks, characters I loved and was invested in. I've had characters slandered in game- as long as it stays in game, I don't see the issue. I wouldn't ever quit over something like that.

When I did quit, it was because of Ooc harassment, or real life issues.

Can we not guilt players for how they play their characters?

[Cdls]

It's an in game thing, let it be an in game thing?

That is what I am trying to get clarification on. If the player quit because they couldn't handle bad things being said about their character over the radio, then obviously this isn't the game for them, but if they quit because of things not in game, we should know about it.