Sex assignment

[Nick]

Skills, tiredness, and deterioration need to be tweaked. That's a given.
But Cantr has always been a gradual process.

[The Industriallist]

Is it really a given? I've been a little out of touch perhaps, but I don't recall anyone ever saying that they were actually making or planning any changes to the current skill system.

I agree with west, on just about everything he wrote. I wish I had come up with that post.

[Snake_byte]

But Cantr has always been a gradual process.

Ya seriously. CantrII will always change. It's a game in the works.
Also if the skills do actually improve then our imagintation is still the limit.
Because none of us are born with any skills at all and we all have somthing we're good at.

[Jos Elkink]

Skills - poorly thought out, detrimental to the game
Deterioration and repair - poorly thought out and detrimental to the game
Hematite - Never balanced. Threw the game completely out of balance, and nobody seems to care.
Modular production - see above.

The funny thing, except for perhaps the last one, all those features were things I objected to for years (real life) until I was finally convinced by the endless arguing by players and implemented them .... and now they are what lead to the most complaints. I could do with a Cantr without skills and - to a lesser extent - without deterioriation, but then a large number of players will complain again that we need skills / deterioriation / etc.

[Jos Elkink]

First, as Surly mentioned, the "your imagination is your limit" tagline no longer applies.

I think you overestimate the power of skills. You can still pretty much play any type of career you want. And your character does train, fafaik.

Second, introducing skills changed cantr from a resource-based game to a blind RPG...

I wonder whether Cantr was ever intended as a resource-based game ... I think I don't 100% understand what you mean there. Cantr is about society-building / politics / economics / etc ... not just about resource gathering ...

Point about blindness taken ...

Third, and related, there's no indication that practicing actually makes you better at something.

Should be the case, though ...

Without a transparent skill system, it's impossible to rule out the possibility that this was intentional (making young characters disproportionately more skilful than their elders).

Exactly the same code is used for the random assignment of skills for older and newer players. There was no disproportional system applied.

Hmm, I say that, but I'm actually not 100% sure now. Maybe at some point I decided that skills were too low and I adjusted the values, thus only affecting new characters. Although my memory is not good enough to 100% rule out that possibility, I don't think we made such an adjustment - I think I only made changes to make *all* characters somewhat more powerful.

If we have skills, we need to do two things. First, stop claiming that "your imagination is your limit."

I think you have a very limited view of your imagination if the few skills that were introduced really stopping you from achieving much ... Most careers in Cantr are totally unaffected. And since there should be training involved, your character can still do anything (s)he wants.

Second, provide general information (as far as what sorts of things are affected by skills) and at least a little bit of information about specific characters and skills, whether by saying "You hit an aardvark with a longbow, which loses 30 strength. You're pretty good with that thing" or something similar, or just having in the character description something like "Farming: above average". "Attacking: average" and the like.

Point taken ...

I am not attacking staff. I love this game and I appreciate all they do for us. But that doesn't mean I can't give feedback when they do something I don't like and think is bad for the game.

No, definitely feedback is appreciated ...

[Lumin]

Skills - poorly thought out, detrimental to the game
Deterioration and repair - poorly thought out and detrimental to the game
Hematite - Never balanced. Threw the game completely out of balance, and nobody seems to care.
Modular production - see above.

The funny thing, except for perhaps the last one, all those features were things I objected to for years (real life) until I was finally convinced by the endless arguing by players and implemented them .... and now they are what lead to the most complaints. I could do with a Cantr without skills and - to a lesser extent - without deterioriation, but then a large number of players will complain again that we need skills / deterioriation / etc.

I was always a fan of the idea of deterioration, I'm just not crazy about the way it's been implemented, and the lack of repairs for the longest time followed by the disappearing items problems soured the whole thing for me. I still say we need it, though I think it still needs some tweaking.

Skills I still dislike - in some hack 'n slash RPG I don't mind thinking about stats and the like, but I'd rather not see it at all in Cantr - somehow it cheapens it for me. West said:

Until skills were implemented (which was a direct descent from randomizing combat), all characters were created equal, and whether you succeeded or not at what you chose to do was a product of your skill, drive, and ambition, and of course your surroundings.

...and I couldn't agree more.

I have no comment about modular changes since I wasn't building many tools yet when the old system was around, and the hematite change was well before my time, though from what I can tell it needed to be done. The lingering problem there is the unbalancing effects of the huge advantage older characters and anyone who 'inherits' their items have because of it, (which still seems to effect the economy and power structure to this day), though I'm not sure what can be done about that.


Edit: And as for the original subject of the poll, the vote seems to be closed now and we're all talking about something else, but put me down for "People should have the OPTION to randomly assign their gender."

[PRUT]

I'm have been playing CANTR from a month already, but already I can say: I don't want skills in CANTR".

There is another thing against.
Now, all Cantrians are equal (maybe have different things but are equal) If we introduce skills, there will be better chars (more experienced) and worse (newspawns). Even now it's enough hard for newspawns to start.

This way of inplementing differences may lead to another crazy thing like ranking of players, which are pretty everywhere in other games. It's a stupid idea - it provokes to bug cheating or to unhealtly rivalisation (just look at Ogame).
All this things will kill such a beautifull idea of CANTR as it is now.

That is my opinion.
Hough!

[kinvoya]

1) I like skills - I just wish I could figure out what the possible skills are so it would be a little easier to tell if my chars have any.

2) I like the concept of repairs - But the repair times are too high. I have seen even some tools with iron, like a used chisel, where the repair time is almost four times as long (15 hours!) as it would take to make a new one (4 hours!). What could these repairs possibly consist of? I'm willing to let bone knives and needles fall apart and make new ones but not a tool which requires iron. That's just too precious and hard to come by.

Is there any evidence at all that repairs are redistributing the wealth as was hoped? Or are the lower middle class chars who have scraped together a modest collection of tools just having to spend all their time repairing and replacing instead of bettering their way of life?

Jur said there would be adjustments but, if they are in place, I haven't noticed them and I focus on tools a lot!

[west]

Or are the lower middle class chars who have scraped together a modest collection of tools just having to spend all their time repairing and replacing instead of bettering their way of life?

Yes.

[Surly]

Skills - poorly thought out, detrimental to the game
Deterioration and repair - poorly thought out and detrimental to the game
Hematite - Never balanced. Threw the game completely out of balance, and nobody seems to care.
Modular production - see above.

The funny thing, except for perhaps the last one, all those features were things I objected to for years (real life) until I was finally convinced by the endless arguing by players and implemented them .... and now they are what lead to the most complaints. I could do with a Cantr without skills and - to a lesser extent - without deterioriation, but then a large number of players will complain again that we need skills / deterioriation / etc.

Well, hematite and modular prodcution just needed balancing. I waited and waited... but the day never came...

And as for those who complain about the need for deterioration and skills... just ignore them. I do. Until they can actually persuade me that those changes are good for the game (even if they were implemented like I suggested) and not just a big stupid waste of time.

[AoM]

Since this game was based on being a society simulator. And since societies are meant to have their alphas and their epsilons, I like the implementation of skills in cantr.

In ye olden days of cantr, the alphas of society would tend to be the characters of the same players, because in a world where every character is created equal, it becomes the "best"/most manipulative players who got ahead in cantr life.

With the skill system, the mix gets a little more interesting. A power hungry player suddenly has to deal with a character that only does 17 damage with a claymore. I find that a challange, not an annoyance. And I get a little angry at people who feel the need to kill off those characters who don't have good skills to begin with. Try rising up the task instead of shirking it.

[Surly]

AoM... don't overlook the fact that this is a game, not a chore. If someone doesn't enjoy playing a character, they should have the right to kill them off.

And skills still suck. Just one of my characters do over 40 damage with a sabre. One. That sucks. I don't mind at least 7 of those being rubbish with a weapon. But the other 7 all have extensive military backgrounds... and now they do under 20 damage with a claymore...

Don't forget that reflects in a poor shield score... It is more than an annoyance. It is ruining the game for me.