Let's talk plans to economize Cantr!

[Nick]

Game Administration Council

[Jos Elkink]

But in Cantr there are members of staff who can and do simply look up A's skills via the database, as well as looking at what's in his inventory, etc, etc. And then use this information for in-game purposes, not so?

I really have no clue where this accusation suddenly comes from. Only very, very few people have this kind of access to the database (5, to be precise, of which 2 are not currently playing Cantr). These few people are highly trustworthy and I am absolutely sure nobody is abusing their access to the database in ways such as you are suggesting.

I'm honestly surprised how you can state this so confidently, without any shred of proof or even indication that this is happening.

[Jur Schagen]

Sure, Sociologist. We also give our characters free sabres when they spawn, a car if they need to travel, and kill any other chars (or, more clinically, delete their records) they don't happen to like. If we wanna know what two whisperes are saying to eachother, we just look it up; and if we are attacked, we just warp to another town. Hey, our chars are gods.

To avoid confusion, the above statement is untrue. If we played like that, we´d quickly find ourselves to be the only people playing the game. Noone plays poker with a man that just draws aces.

All right, time to come clean I suppose. I have abused database access on two occassions.

1) I meant to speak privately, but accidently spoke out loud. It was a highly sensitive statement, that would have ruined this char's career if some other chars present had heard it. Yes, I went to the database and deleted the record. Yes, I felt bad about that, since it's something a regular player can't do. But I really really like this char, and would feel horrible if his whole career would go down the drain because of a stupid player error.

2) I had gone away once for several hours, and left a Cantr session open; when I returned I forgot to close it and continued playing... obviously, immediatly getting the "out of minutes" message. Yes, I went to the database and gave myself some minutes. I did not feel particularly bad about this one.

Those are the things I have done; shoot me for them. I happen to know that Jos has abused his access in the past to spawn chars in certain places he was interested in; and even though regular players can't do that, I feel he should be free to do that because, well, it is his game, and if he is interested in any particular region I think he has the right to spawn there.

Apart from that, I can't help but notice some straight values when browsing the database. I know what's the best weapon around... sure, it's a value you immediatly see when browsing the object types. For most tables though, you can't immediatly "see" what you want... as in the skills, those are in a table containing only key values (char id's), not names. You'd have to actively write an SQL statement (programming-style code to access the database) to get the skill value, looking up your char idea first, then linking it to the skill table, looking through the PHP code to get the particular skill ID number you'd wanna know... sure, it can be done, but it's not as if you can accidently stumble upon it. I don't do that, and I'm sure noone else of these five does either. We use the web interface to play the game, just like everybody else does.

In some ways, we are even more restricted then other players. For instance, when introducing repair, I realized that items could be "hidden" to the deter system... like a lot of players know now, too. However, I'm not allowing my chars to use it, unless told to do so by their superiors.

Sociologist, you continue to accuse staff of playing unfair. I know for a fact that nobody continues to abuse staff status, they are kicked from it when found. Yes, there are staff members playing influential chars all around Cantr. But they have created that position as players, not as staffers.

Jur.

[The Sociologist]

I'm honestly surprised how you can state this so confidently, without any shred of proof or even indication that this is happening.

Well, you yourself saw one of the shreds of proof in connection with the "starvation" incident. Given that Francesca would have run out of food just that one particular day since she was using up the last of the grilled meat and had 4 grams left, even though she had been eating properly every single day before then. And suddenly her hunger shoots up from 0 to 95.6% overnight, meaning that she would have died later that day had I not spotted it--within a matter of hours in fact. An unusual "instant starvation" bug never seen before and never seen since? That just happened quite by chance to occur the very night before she would have gone hungry just for once? Hmm... Or else an attempt at assassination by database? Which seems more likely? Did you ever manage to resolve what happened? And I cite this one particular incident since it was one which you had a chance to monitor yourself. I have other grounds for suspicion, but they are less obvious and much more difficult to pin down.

But that aside, I think the point about this "hiding" of skills is that it can lead to all sorts of rumors here on the forum. For example, Surly's recent comment. Are combat skills really declining independently of hunting skills? Will they decline to zero? If so, will that lead to the majority of charries being incapable of any kind of combat at all at some point in the future? But then this is obviously a factor that people with "inside" information are likely to know about and prepare for, which reinforces the opinion that such ooc behavior is being used to enforce social order in the game.

On the other hand, if this is a mere rumor, then that merely serves to establish the well-known fact: when matters are kept secret, then rumors abound. And they will tend to abound here on the forum more than in-game. And rumors make people unhappy. Which means less enthusiasm and poorer reviews. Look, there are many elements of "hiddenness" that I'm quite happy with, eg newspawns not knowing about map data till they find a map and suchlike. But this lack of knowledge of what amounts to the basic physiology of the charries is another matter.

So that's what I meant by my comments.

[Robert Shmeashter]

I agree with Sociologist that people should be able to know, at least in a qualitative way, how good their individual skills are. You get quantitative information of how much damage you do when you attack; that should not be, because you cannot tell, in RL, how much pints of blood a deer loses when you shoot it with a bow. But you should know how good you are at the bow, whether you are good at it or not. If person A missed by a meter and person B missed by a half-meter, which is better? You should get qualitative messages, like, "you feel pathetic at hunting", or "you feel very skilled at hunting". If skills actually do go up and down, you should get messages like: "You feel your skill in hunting increase" or "You feel your skill in hunting degenerate", comparing how you did with the last time you used the skill. This should be true not only with hunting, but with all other skills.

[Pie]

I agree with Sociologist that people should be able to know, at least in a qualitative way, how good their individual skills are. You get quantitative information of how much damage you do when you attack; that should not be, because you cannot tell, in RL, how much pints of blood a deer loses when you shoot it with a bow. But you should know how good you are at the bow, whether you are good at it or not. If person A missed by a meter and person B missed by a half-meter, which is better? You should get qualitative messages, like, "you feel pathetic at hunting", or "you feel very skilled at hunting". If skills actually do go up and down, you should get messages like: "You feel your skill in hunting increase" or "You feel your skill in hunting degenerate", comparing how you did with the last time you used the skill. This should be true not only with hunting, but with all other skills.

well, we could have people be spawned with like, talent. exelent sword skilles, bow mastery, or really long legs.

[Cookie]

I agree. I mean if your in town and you need someone to make you a suit, your going to want someone who s good at that sorta thing. And how do you know who's good if they don't even know themselves. Ussualy in life you find what your talents are then make the most of them.

[The Sociologist]

And how do you know who's good if they don't even know themselves.

Exactly. That's it exactly.

[AoM]

While I agree that there should be some way for a person to realize that they are good at something so you can have people better find their niche in life, I don't agree with Socio's conspiracy theories. Those are over the top. The three players who have access to these kinds of things are not trying to screw us. It would be as Jur says: dumb, and damaging to the game.