skill poll

[Solfius]

I used to play lots of strategy games, but I stopped playing them because they all were too easy, too predictable, (and not open ended enough, but that's not related to this)

[west]

The POINT of cantr is that you can eventually get somewhere on your own, like real life, never interacting with anyone for anything, but everyone benefits from working in a society. We don't really have commerce yet, as nobody wants to trade steel for less valuable stuff once they have it, but we do end up having groups of half-a-dozen or more people banding together and getting things done much faster than they would on their own...buildings, weapons, etc. It's a society simulator. If your chars choose to live on the edges that's fine, but they won't get the benefits of societal interaction if they don't participate. That's why the game is hard.

[The Industriallist]

I don't think we need visible, though that might help with the trouble-shooting that seems to be badly needed. In the long run I think hidden skills are probably better.

I'm pretty sure there's something defective in the improvement, though.

I also think that we ought to know what activities skills apply to. IRL, you know pretty quick that the answer is going to be everything. In cantr, I think I've worked out that it's a lot less, but I don't know for sure...and new players would take a while to figure it out.

[Nick]

I don't think we need visible, though that might help with the trouble-shooting that seems to be badly needed. In the long run I think hidden skills are probably better.

That's what I've been thinking.

[Solfius]

well, I think a nice middle ground for hidden vs visible is descriptiors for activities you're currently doing

[kinvoya]

If the players who are obsessively observing, charting and measuring everything their chars do still can't figure out what is going on with skills then the more casual player really has little hope of ever figuring them out.

So, if skills are so obscure and hard to percieve they have little to no value as presently designed, it seems to me. That's why I feel that they might as well not even exist right now.

The only skill I've actually seen is that some chars can hit some things really hard and some can't. And the only thing this has really done is to mess up some already established chars lives.

I don't like all the bars and stuff but if we are meant to have the skills play a part in determining the life choices and life outcomes of our chars then we really need to be able to tell 1) what the possible skills actually are and 2) is my char good at it or not? And we have to be able to establish this within the first year or so of a chars life so they can make some career choices.

[swymir]

It's not hard to figure out what you are good at. No one wants to do the work to figure it out is all. The only things anyone can clearly see is how hard they hit and sadly that is what skills has been dwindled down too (how much damage can I hit for with a sabre), has anyone tried using different weapons? And not just a composite bow! Has anyone checked to see if they seem to always hit in the upper 20% of the fluctuation when farming potatoes?

I think that skill should never be seen. That is stupid and I would just lead to people deleting or not playing characters because they wanted to make a warrior and they look at thier skills and see that they are only good at farming. If you want to make a hunter but only hit for 2% with a sabre go ahead, nothing is stopping you. If your character believes he should be a hunter let him. It opens up tons of RP oppertunities, but you could just have your character quit hunting all together. Hunting and killing other characters is not the only thing there is to do in the game. If you are worried about protection, start a band of mercenaries and have them do the fighting for you and just never swing a weapon making up the excuse that that is beneath you.

I have never thought of Cantr as a game and calling it such is demeaning. It's a society simulator and the best one I've ever seen. Anything that makes Cantr like any other game on the internet is BAD. Especially if it makes it like one of the million hack and slash games. It's right on the front page. If your idea of a good time is to leave a trail of corpses behind you, Cantr II is not the game for you

It's a society simulator nobody in the game is remembered because they ammased the most stuff they are remembered because they are excellent roleplayers. So RP![/i]

[AngelSpice]

I actually have one character that's good with weapons, but seems to be better with a composite recurve bow than a sabre. I'm still testing it out.

One is good at masonry.

I haven't figured out the others yet.

I don't know if I have any good farmers as I usually start such large projects that by the time they're done, I forgot what the startin target value is. I guess I need to do some testing with smaller values.

[Agar]

If the players who are obsessively observing, charting and measuring everything their chars do still can't figure out what is going on with skills then the more casual player really has little hope of ever figuring them out.

*waves a chart* That'd be me, however, I do have a smattering of an idea what is going on.

I would like to point out, though, that the only reason I've been able to perceive anything is because of the unique situation my character is in. I'm on Aki, so I get to hunt 5 to 8 things everyday, more when we have newspawns to shoot, and it's still taken me over a month of data gathering to show any results.

A casual player doesn't get to do something every day for months on end. They aren't casual players then, they're either machines or slaves. Casual players aren't going to notice anything, so they might as well play as if there wasn't a skill system.

I don't know if there's a way for skills to degrade, or if they guy that's seeing the damage going down is figuring in tiredness, health, the target's protection, tiredness, health, and everything else you have to assume these days.

I think it's not so much that skills can get better or worse that's the problem, I think it's the vast differences in the values that are being used for "good" skills and "bad" skills. If you're good, You're really good, but if you're bad, you're really bad. If things were more normalised, and not so far off the center, skills would be more managable and not such a subject of contreversy.

[Agar]

I also want to take a moment to agree with Swymir.

I think the best thing that could happen would be that you don't see the % damage you do to other players, or animals, if that's possible. You don't see that in real life, so why have we retained that in the stats to bar change?

If we could look at animals and see a description of it like there used to be for players, that'd be more realistic.

"The wolf is viscious and furry, and appears to have average strength."

"The cow is sedintary and covered in a spotted hide, and appears to be strong"

Or something.

It'd mean "hunters" would have an idea of what is getting low on life, and could hunt that, and could also see about how much they'd need to shoot to get it from stong to weak.

The main thing that is keeping skills in the highlight is the %'s on damage. Eliminate those, and people will quit trying to "power game" by making a fighter, and get back to roleplaying.

[Nick]

But still, players who complain are how we get processes perfected.
Skills need to be visible until all of us loud mouthed complainers whine enough until it's working smoothly.
Then they can be rehidden.

[kinvoya]

Fatigue, injuries that never heal, hunger?, quality of tools, working on a project with other chars and the fact that we don't know what the possible skills even are, together with who knows how many other factors make it almost impossible for the chars or the players to be aware of them, muchless measure them. To most players, including me, they are all but meaningless. I may have a fabulous coal miner or seamstress among my chars but, most likely, I'll never know.

Like a lot of people, I'm trying to minimize the time I spend on Cantr not turn it into a scientific research project. Very few of my chars ever hunt or hit people (the most easily observed skills) so even though I think having skills is a nifty idea it really is pointless for me. Also, I'm guessing that the people who don't read the forums have never even considered the idea that skills exist.

[Surly]

I have never thought of Cantr as a game and calling it such is demeaning. It's a society simulator and the best one I've ever seen. Anything that makes Cantr like any other game on the internet is BAD. Especially if it makes it like one of the million hack and slash games. It's right on the front page. If your idea of a good time is to leave a trail of corpses behind you, Cantr II is not the game for you

It's a society simulator nobody in the game is remembered because they ammased the most stuff they are remembered because they are excellent roleplayers. So RP![/i]

What the hell are you talking about? It isn't a game? What planet are you on? Cantr may be a society simulator, but it is still a game. And I think it is exactly the view that it isn't a game is what has changed the aims of developments. I hate skills, I've only just adapted to tiredness, I think item degradation is poorly thought out and I think modular buidling has gone too far. The moment you take away the game element, it becomes a chore. It stops being fun, and people are less inclined. The sheer number of established players who quit because of these changes can;t be shrugged off lightly - something drove them away.
And you tell me to roleplay? Well, I question the point of that. I have spent 20 Cantr years (over a year of my life) trying to be consistent in my RP for individual characters. Now, this one implementation has meant that all that RP has been a lie. Now, he isn't the competant fighter I thought he was, he is in fact so bad with his sabre he can't do above 10 damage, fully rested, to an unarmed man. I am totally disillusioned with how much the game is starting to dictate to me what my characters are like. My imagination is no longer my limit... now programming is, and it is ruining the best game on the web.

A casual player doesn't get to do something every day for months on end. They aren't casual players then, they're either machines or slaves. Casual players aren't going to notice anything, so they might as well play as if there wasn't a skill system.

I think that is a very good point. This is less a game for casual players now, it is a game for those people that dedicate their lives to it. All well and good, but that will drive new players away and make it less fun for all of us. Visible skills would simplify things, and I think it's impact could only be good for the game.

I think the best thing that could happen would be that you don't see the % damage you do to other players, or animals, if that's possible. You don't see that in real life, so why have we retained that in the stats to bar change?

...The main thing that is keeping skills in the highlight is the %'s on damage. Eliminate those, and people will quit trying to "power game" by making a fighter, and get back to roleplaying.

Oh no... No, no, no, no. Please no. You want to make things even harder? What is the point? Why change something that no-one ever really complains about, when there are so many things that are unexplained and just don't work?

And the number who "power game" is much less than you think... but more to the point, maybe I want to make a fighter? I want my characters to be different, because that makes Cantr more interesting. But now, Cantr dictates to me what goes on, and that seriously impairs RP. Maybe we should stop trying to force people to RP, and actually let them?

[The Sociologist]

I voted "No, I don't like it and will never do" because the skills system forced me to terminate any number of charries as they had become unplayable. I very very nearly left the game when I decided to terminate Zaro. My mouse hovered over that big X so so many times.

Please also bear in mind that if you make skills more visible, and make more obvious the steps needed to improve them at the same time, then you run the risk of turning Cantr into a "levelling" MUD just like all the other clones. This is especially so if levelling requires lots of online work like hunting, practice combat or the like.

If that is what Cantr is to become, then you might as well add dungeons, dragons and spells...and have done with it.

On the other hand, if there's to be no way to improve skills in any decent time frame, as seems currently the case, then nobody in their right mind will accept a category "1" hunter anyway given how extreme the skill disadvantages are (hurts for ~10 with a top-range weapon). Which will simply waste everyone's time and increase the number of corpses to bury.

And the GAC can rant and rave as much as they like about it. It's obvious many players are doing precisely the same thing I did. What will you have then? A "Food Police" service rooting around in the database to check up on starving charries and firing off hundreds of emails? Do staff not have better things to do?

Currently, all the skills system does is to destroy the democratic basis upon which we used to build the characteristics of our characters for roleplay purposes, yet it gives us no clues or support in setting up new characters. It is currently fundamentally destructive of roleplay.

I vote for skills to be terminated. Yes, I know a lot of work went into it, but any professional programmer will tell you that backing out of bad choices is part of the art of software design.

[Nick]

I vote for skills to be terminated. Yes, I know a lot of work went into it, but any professional programmer will tell you that backing out of bad choices is part of the art of software design.

Wow, you guys are an endless waterfall of complaints.
Don't just back out of the skill system because it was implemented badly.
Strangely enough, that's become Cantr's style. New implementations suck.
But they get improved with our input, and over time we realise they made the game that much better.
Make them visible until skills are bearable, then make them invisible again.