Carving Knife

[west]

I keep playing because I find it fascinating despite the way constant distortions mangle development.

Getting to X degree of technological/civilization development is NOT the point of cantr. Humans have typically gone millenia without significant advancements, and neither we nor our IC counterparts have a divine manifesto to reach some pinnacle of technological developent.

I'm not picking on you specifically, of course. Cantr would develop in fascinating ways whether or not the game mechanics ever changed. I just think these upheavals do more good than harm.

[Lumin]

Getting to X degree of technological/civilization development is NOT the point of cantr.

If Cantr can said to have a "point" at all it's to be a society simulator...and I don't think anyone can argue that things like technology and economics don't play a HUGE factor in how societies develop, both in RL and in game. (Probably a much bigger factor than standing around in the middle of town and RPing, even if that's the fun part.) You can't really seperate them; disrupt one and you disrupt the other.

[west]

Societies have to adapt to disruptions or they'll never change.

Again, the changes do not detract from cantr's purpose as a society simulator. Watching how societies dealt with the iron change, for example, was quite interesting. Or animals, or the time warp, or amnesia, or not knowing everyone's name, or tiredness, etc. etc.

[The Industriallist]

Societies have to adapt to disruptions or they'll never change.

Again, the changes do not detract from cantr's purpose as a society simulator. Watching how societies dealt with the iron change, for example, was quite interesting. Or animals, or the time warp, or amnesia, or not knowing everyone's name, or tiredness, etc. etc.

No, it certainly doesn't. Given, that is, that the goal is to simulate societies in a world governed by the incomprehensable whims (form a character standpoint, not a forumer standpoint) of imperceptable gods, they have no ill effects whatsoever.

If we're trying to simulate anything in a realistic world, then there's a bit of a problem there...we usually just paper over it, which is good enough most of the time.

Nothing happens in the real world without some reason within the world (by definition of world...). A great deal happens in cantr with no reason that exists inside of cantr.

[kinvoya]

Seriously, could everybody whose forum name ends in ...ist just unclench.

Please?

[west]

Given, that is, that the goal is to simulate societies in a world governed by the incomprehensable whims (form a character standpoint, not a forumer standpoint) of imperceptable gods, they have no ill effects whatsoever.

If we're trying to simulate anything in a realistic world, then there's a bit of a problem there...we usually just paper over it, which is good enough most of the time.

Nothing happens in the real world without some reason within the world (by definition of world...). A great deal happens in cantr with no reason that exists inside of cantr.

Science and religion are two ways of trying to explain the unknowable.

For the vast majority of human history we've had no idea why some stuff happens. A fair amount of everyday stuff is inexplainable by science, and we're finding out that the more we know the less we know.

In that regard, cantr is wholly consistent with real life. Indeed, I'd say the people in cantr have rather a better grip of the mechanics of their world than we do of ours, and certainly better than we've had for the vast majority of human history.

[Solfius]

I think the one thing this thread does do is demonstrate just how tough a job Anthony and the others have.

I think Anthony's changes were great on this occasion, but obviously I'm biased by the experiences of my charries in-game. And The Industriallist is in effect freely admitting that he's upset because one of his charries did make a carving knife. So objectivity is hard to establish!

The fault here lies with the person who set up the carving knife originally. They probably did it that way because carving knives were used to make crossbows, and so they felt added difficulty was needed, or something. But the problem is that the result is counter-intuitive and therefore can't last.

To point at a different thread, we have the same problem now arising with Bronze. The Resources staff are adding materials for the sake of "difficulty" but the result is far from intuitive or logical...or even rational. So, therefore, Sociologist guarantees that it won't last.

They should save us all a lot of pain.

That is why I advocate the use of RL as the basis for all resource implementations, as that is constant, there's no need to consider balancing because the numbers are all there to be used, just some scaling. Then there can be no arguement whether something is a good decision, because the RD can point to the info source and say this is how it is in RL.

[The Industriallist]

Seriously, could everybody whose forum name ends in ...ist just unclench.

Please?

Well, I was going to stop about two posts back, but then West kept posting his 'random stuff happens' theory of life.

Can't let that go...

Science and religion are two ways of trying to explain the unknowable.

For the vast majority of human history we've had no idea why some stuff happens. A fair amount of everyday stuff is inexplainable by science, and we're finding out that the more we know the less we know.

In that regard, cantr is wholly consistent with real life. Indeed, I'd say the people in cantr have rather a better grip of the mechanics of their world than we do of ours, and certainly better than we've had for the vast majority of human history.

It's true that until recently people didn't know a lot about first causes and such. As a result, things sometimes happened that they had no hope to really explain or predict. Most things in nature operate quite predictably, though, whether or not you know why...and they keep doing so for a very long time. People knew very well when the animals come through, when the river floods, when there are bad storms, when crops come in...and they were seldom much wrong, despite knowing nothing about the mechanics of those events.

In real history, most of the time you'd be very lucky (or unlucky) to see your world really go wrong on you even twice in your lifetime, and a lot of the time it would just be for a year or two before it went back to how it was...cantr's just heading toward the end of it's first lifetime now, and we've had I don't know how many world-shattering shifts, with a bunch more small but significant alterations. And hardly any of them have switched back after a while (thankfully).

[west]

In real history, most of the time you'd be very lucky (or unlucky) to see your world really go wrong on you even twice in your lifetime, and a lot of the time it would just be for a year or two before it went back to how it was...cantr's just heading toward the end of it's first lifetime now, and we've had I don't know how many world-shattering shifts, with a bunch more small but significant alterations. And hardly any of them have switched back after a while (thankfully).

I guess we're just lucky, then.