Thinking about quitting.....

[Alladinsane]

Correction: PD has nothing to do with the decisions involving programming.

They do their jobs.
We do ours.

I am sorry that some of the unannounced changes may have made a few things inconvenient for some.
But for others they make more sense.

Either way, when we start searching for a boogie-man in all of this, it does no good for anyone.
Can we please consider our ad-hominems before we launch them?

===================
20+ years as a chef did teach me a bit about pastries (hated it, too meticulous for my tastes)
and that, indeed, some sort of shortening or fat is used to create pastry dough. Layers and layers, folds and rolls.

I am sure Greek continues to work for all of our good and out of his own sweat and effort.

I for one am hoping we can return to thanking and praising those who work for us.
Whatever happened to the RD praise thread?

That would be setting an example.


/rant #2

[Doug R.]

Most casual players seem to use PD as a synonym for all staff.

[Greek]

I mean really, you're gonna change the whole recipe for pastry dough which is used for a ton of STAPLE foods and we have to use butter but not water?

Adding water requirement is usually senseless, because water can be fetched in any location, thus making it a quite weak trading resource (while stimulating trade [or generally cooperation] is a good thing). As addition, it can be created for free using solar stills, so adding it won't add anything meaningful when compared to making the project a bit longer.

Doesn't even make sense, just trying to be inconvenient.. and how am I expected to react to it in-game, all my characters magically forgot how to make pie and pizza and dietary staples they've made all their lives?

It's not the first time. It has happened many times, like when introducing windows, removing tea or changing the game mechanics to disallow exploits.
We've looked into the case to make sure that no characters will lose their only source of food. Most of recipes cooked with pastry dough are meant to be luxurious foods which have simpler equivalents. If you can cook pizza, then you can bake bread. Meat pie -> cooked meat and bread. It's hard to say which food is "luxurious" and which isn't, because it can depend on the region. But projects which transform a single resource into another resource are generally redundant. It's like transforming resource into the same resource but with lower amount per day of work. Plain work doesn't make things more luxurious.

I can't even react in-character to this, that's not fair at all! Animal products are hard enough to get already, I had characters who have written cook books in this game specifically written to explain how pastry dough is made without water, etc., now totally useless, I have to start over.

Well, I've written much about fighting tactics and spent dozens of hours how to explain these tricks to make it sound well in-character. When some of exploits got removed, I've just accepted it. Things must change to be able to go forward.
It was never intention to change anything to make somebody mad, there are always serious reasons. We know that changes that "spoil" things are usually much more noticeable than bunch of cool additions. It's never possible to make everyone happy, especially when making changes which can make life of any character harder. Original recipe for pizza was done like that, because there was no way to get milk other than hunting cows. Now we don't have such limitations, so reason to have it this way has disappeared. And giving more importance for domesticated animal products is a good thing, in my opinion.

Basically my only way around it is to have my characters start an enormous pizza/pastry dough projects before the 15th to keep from magically suddenly inexplicably being unable to make them..

That's not disallowed.

like it's not hard enough to deal with all the players making this game unbearable, now the PD is in on the torment too.

It has nothing to do with PD, unless there are other things you mention. Such changes are done by Resources Department and with my supervision.

I hope it was worth it, I'm just gonna stop playing... they change everything that works fine and ignore the actual issues, I'm done.. you just messed things up for a lot of my best characters, and I know if I stay then next month we'll need to make chicken stock before we can make stew

Well, that's quite harsh evaluation of my three years of work in ProgD and RD, but it's your right.
Other people can have different idea of which things are fine and which are broken. I'd like to have some totally objective set of axioms which can be used to formally prove which things are good and which are bad, but I'm afraid it ain't going to happen, just because different people focus on different things in Cantr.
Could you name these actual issues, especially the ones related to work of my department? I know that communication between RD and players isn't perfect. It's because I often have too little time to read all the forums and even if so, then I can't answer it properly. Writing a single post takes me looooooooots of time so I prefer to spend it on playing or game development.

you just messed things up for a lot of my best characters, and I know if I stay then next month we'll need to make chicken stock before we can make stew, and then suddenly we'll need garlic in the pizza too, and then basil, and where the hell does it end?

We didn't have idea to change anything about stew, but possible arguments in discussion about that could be interesting, I think. The second part is about basil and garlic.
Adding basil AND THEN garlic can't bring anything positive when compared to requirement of just basil or just garlic, considering how the herbal system works. Any amount of herbs can be automatically produced if you only have initial gram of herb and water, which can be fetched anywhere or even got for free from solar stills. With such system after some time all herbs are interchangeable and any herb can be produced anywhere with the same efficiency. I find it a real problem.

[Swingerzetta]

I experienced the hit-and-drag mechanic recently. Kind of put a shade of impermanence and irrelevance on all my other characters. I'll wait to see if this apathy passes.

I discovered, once my disappointment faded, that what I was experiencing was actually a moment of clarity. Turns out our characters ARE impermanent and irrelevant. It's a game, after all. And at least one character I still enjoy playing, so I'll continue to participate in this irrelevant activity known as gaming, and hope that I have the good luck to avoid such pvp elements in the future.

[Mitch79]

I happen to like the changes and the efforts that the staff have made. This is a game that is constantly changing and developing more and more and what is "unneccessary" for some, isn't for others in the game. One upset person doesn't speak for us all. Thank you to those staff involved and I look forward to working with the changes in the game. Well done and keep up the good work.

[sherman]

I happen to like the changes and the efforts that the staff have made. This is a game that is constantly changing and developing more and more and what is "unneccessary" for some, isn't for others in the game. One upset person doesn't speak for us all. Thank you to those staff involved and I look forward to working with the changes in the game. Well done and keep up the good work.

exactly and games need to develop constantly, there isn't such thing as a perfect online game

[Surly]

I think I am going to censor myself on the butter issue, since I know I have a tendency to rant.

Focussing on the positive changes instead, I think a lot of good stuff has either been recently implemented or is being worked on. The interface changes over the last few years have been especially good (speaking as someone who took a year away from the game). Animal domestication is good, the forthcoming building destruction looks good. The ship wrecks idea is fun and the addition of repair aids (such as the whetstone) is very good. I am looking forward to the new storage interface. So many good things have been introduced recently which probably (and unfairly) don't get the praise they deserve, whereas a few pointless and frustrating changes get (fairly) lambasted.

On the issue of quitting over game mechanics - I managed not to quit when random skills were introduced that invalidated several years of RP for a number of my characters (cooks that were suddenly awkward, guards that were suddenly weak, blacksmiths who suddenly had no skill with tools or metals etc.), so all I can say is that I hope you can take a few days to cool off and reconsider. I enjoy RPing with your characters and you would be a loss to several in-game communities.

[miirkaelisaar]

Why not make a new pizza with cheese and leave the old type ALONE because you ruined the game for me? New foods are one thing but changing old ones retards my ability to roleplay consistently, my characters aren't going to magically decide to put butter in everything when milk is the most expensive animal product in cantr! Do you even play this game? Do you know how hard milk is to obtain and how you screwed people? I thought ooc disruption of our game play was against the rules. You never hanged an already imlleme ted recipe before and like I said where does it end? We get usrd to using cheese and you get bored and make us use basil too? Make a new food called cheese pizza, make a new pastry dough if you NEED to put butter in it but DON'T ruin my characters' livelihoods for a change that is not necessary. Real pizza originally was dough and tomatoes, it's perfectly realistic and you just made a staple food source extremely expensive for no reason without giving everyone a say. It feels like you want us to just quit, it feels like a slap in the face. It feels like I just lost the ability to play this game until I can figure out how to make my characters forget what pizza is because no way in hell are they going to be able to afford it, or meat pie or cookies, all destroyed. Making butter sk we can have NEW recipes is a FAR CRY from changing a common recipe to be very hard to make. ...EDITED BECAUSE ATTACKING OTHER PLAYERS IS NOT ALLOWED... they get the short stick and it's not fair to me as a player, or to thr players whose characters will starve now.

[Bmot]

Miirk, not only do I think you're overreacting (like GreeK said, plenty of other options around, you don't -have- to eat meat pie and pizza), I also think it's unfair you attack another player like that, and I don't appreciate that.

You can disagree with game changes as much as you like, but don't make it personal to players who can't help it, and don't have the same opinion as you do.

[ObsessedWithCats]

I agree it might have been better to add a new food with the butter and cheese and leave the original pizza intact, perhaps with a slightly altered name, but you're really not sounding rational here miirkaelisaar. As Greek said, if you have the ingredients for old pizza then bread will always be an alternative, so no one is going to starve. Please don't go quitting over this change - it may feel huge now but I suspect if you were to quit now over this you'd regret it in a week or less.

[NancyLee]

I don't mean this in an acrimonious way, but maybe you should take a deep breath and a walk? Because unless this tantrum serves you for some personal purpose such as giving vent to your emotions, I doubt it would take you anywhere. While proposing and suggesting things in a calmer way, maybe would.

I am not exactly the biggest fan of the last change but it's mostly for selfish reasons, and I don't think that any player, staff members included, wakes up thinking "let's see how we can screw Miirkaelisar today". Attacking other players like that just because they don't agree with you creates a very unpleasant environment.

Every change in the game creates a "disruption" to a certain degree, I agree with some and disagree with some others, but changes are needed to make a game, any game, evolve.

[Alladinsane]

I think it might hurt rp to a degree if it makes things more complicated... maybe.
So what if a bunch of us once again become potato farmers?

enjoy the game.

[Surly]

Let's avoid words like trolling, irrational and tantrum shall we? I don't think many people are coming across very well here and name calling and casual insults is unacceptable on both sides.

[Cdls]

If you are referring to my post, then you should understand that it was neither name calling or insulting. It was a statement that the emotion/intent behind the outbursts is unacceptable and not cohesive to a discussion.

[Genie]

I find the reaction harsh and I appreciate all the efforts, but seriously do we really need all the changes and the extreme work? Goal should be making things easier and more enjoyable for the people, not complicated. I am not likely to wind up against someone, but recent improvements will change few things for my chars too and they will certainly stay away from the some detailed recipes. They will just stuck with old and simpler stuff. There is always a solution like that, but probably it is not the same with everyone and I can emphatize with their frustration. I am sure there is something to be done to prevent such reactions before they happen and make some players nervous.