To the Programmers: Enough with the changes, please

[julie2]

Hey I agree with almost everybody, here. Well said, Kinvota et al.

[El_Skwidd]

I sort of sit on the fence with this issue. On one hand, I'd really like to see the new things on the agenda like building destruction, children, and other things. I'd also like to see the gathering limits changed the way they're going to be finalized, if they haven't been already.

On the other hand, I can only imagine how frustrating boat warping is. The MySQL errors when people are picking up and handing things off are annoying, but not seriously damaging to gameplay. I'm sure there are plenty of other bugs that could be worked out as well.

[Surly]

The point is not that many players are against change. I would say that is almost the opposite of the truth.. however the players would rather the changes were seen all the way thorugh and completely finished and polished before another project is started.

Otherwise the unbalance of Cantr gets worse and worse... and every time that is ignored in favour of a new change, it gets worse...

[Schme]

Never spoke before, just started attacking people.

1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser a woman in her twenties avec un(e) à poings nus .

1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser a man in his twenties avec un(e) à poings nus .

1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser Suicidal Newspawn avec un(e) à poings nus .

1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser a woman in her twenties avec un(e) à poings nus .

1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser Pierre Marie Bonterre avec un(e) à poings nus .

(And so on. In otherwords, she punched everyone for no reason.)
1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser a man in his twenties avec un(e) à poings nus .

(You see Suicidal newspawn clumsily hurt you with her bare fist.)
1254-6: Suicidal Newspawn vous attaque avec un(e) à poings nus et vous manque. Vous n`êtes pas blessé(e).

(You see Suicidal newspawn clumsily hurt Clothaire Lejeune with her bare fist.)
1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser Clothaire LeJeune avec un(e) à poings nus .

(You see Suicidal newspawn clumsily hurt Cecile Dubois with her bare fist.)
1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser Cecile Dubois avec un(e) à poings nus .

(You see Suicidal newspawn clumsily hurt Clovis Lettellier with her bare fist.)
1254-6: Vous voyez Suicidal Newspawn de façon maladroite blesser Clovis Lettelier avec un(e) à poings nus .

(Could someone please kill me and activate my unhappy death?)
1254-6: Suicidal Newspawn dit: « Est-ce que quelqu'un pourrait svp me tuer et activer ma mort malheureuse? »

They said « Thanks, we’re on it. » after this one. But nothing happened at all. She even had time to walk back here. We dealt with is on our own.

There are others, but I don’t have time. And anyways, you only asked for one.



I think you might just be being blindly defensive, here, Surly. When critiscism is due, don't just deny for the sake of it.

I disagree with Kinvoya. I'm all for changes and this complaining about them is nothing new. Cantr has completely changed since I started almost three years ago. Nothing is the same and it has continued to change. People complained, quit, or whatever back then but the game has always progressed........"

You'd say that, man. You helped orchestrate the whole thing. It was from you and your friends ideas.

The Players Departement always agrees with the players departement, as you guys have discussed this beforehand and come to your own conclusions.

Sure, you've had changes in the past, man, but as you said, some were not for the good of the game.

This is one of those things, and it's not all that hard too see.

Sure, not a problem for your characters. You know what's coming. But we don't.

I sometimes wonder if people from the Players Departement are still playing.

It does not really seem to me that the Players Departement is very in touch with the players.

And that name is misleading. It makes one think that it is a departement for the players.


Yes, players do want change. But good change, not any and all change. And not rapid, disorganized, whimsical and poorly thought out change.

[Surly]

I think you might just be being blindly defensive, here, Surly. When critiscism is due, don't just deny for the sake of it.

You've missed the point, Schme. What you just gave as an example of 'moderation requests' is not so. That is a CR breach problem, or PD problem, whatever... it is not a moderation request. Look at the moderation request forum... not the CR breach forum. That is what I am talking of.

By all means criticise where you feel criticism is due. But I do think the CD does the job of moderating very well... and I think you are mixing terms here. Your problem is with the PD and their work, not the CD and ours.

[Schme]

True, CR is PD.

But many moderation requests go unhandled aswell.

Really, just look in that forum.

Also, I did mention CR breaches, if you read a bit more thouroughly.

[Surly]

As this has little relevance to the actual thread, I will pursue this elsewhere...

Back on topic?

[kinvoya]

Schme, perhaps you should start a Criticise the PD/CD thread to talk about those issues. This one is for people to comment about the changes in game mechanics.

I don't think anyone is advocating that all change should stop forever and I'm not criticising the changes, per se, just their frequency. It seems like we have been knocked off our feet time after time after time by major changes in the last year without any chance for recovery.

You spent a good part of that time not playing, Serenity. I'm not sure how much you play now so maybe you didn't get the full effect of all the changes that started with tiredness and have swept over us nonstop for the last six months or so. You are talking about the distant past but we are talking about the stresses on our chars and on our own lives as players right now.

I feel overwhelmed by all the changes. It takes time to understand all the implications of them. Each one requires that we adjust the realities of our chars but we don't get any time for this before another one hits right away. It's hard to even distinguish the effects of one change from another.

[Schme]

As this has little relevance to the actual thread, I will pursue this elsewhere...

Back on topic?

All I was saying is that perhaps the efforts of the staff would be better spent on enforcing there own policies, rather than a rapid succesion of (in my opnion) bad changes.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

The point is not that many players are against change. I would say that is almost the opposite of the truth.. however the players would rather the changes were seen all the way thorugh and completely finished and polished before another project is started.

Otherwise the unbalance of Cantr gets worse and worse... and every time that is ignored in favour of a new change, it gets worse...

Well said...

[Nick]

I disagree with Kinvoya. I'm all for changes and this complaining about them is nothing new. Cantr has completely changed since I started almost three years ago. Nothing is the same and it has continued to change. People complained, quit, or whatever back then but the game has always progressed.

Some changes, we learn later, wasn't always for the good but that is a learning experience for the people involved in making this game. But if changes were never made then Cantr would still be contained on one single page and about all you can do is build some things, hit people, talk out loud, and write notes. That was about all you could do three years ago.

And furthermore, there will always be bugs. Today, the game is running more smoothly than ever compared to the countless bugs and problems we use to have back three or even two years ago. If you think Cantr has problems now then you haven't seen Cantr when we have had major problems. Some players here including myself will remember back three years ago and the time warping incident where we warped back 4 real world months of the game. And a lot of big things happened in those 4 months that really screwed up the game having to play again.

Changes are going to continue. People are going to complain. Bugs will happen whether or not changes are made. And Cantr will continue to progress.

Well yes, Cantr still needs a bunch more changes before we even think of stopping the changes for good.

All I was thinking, and I think many people are in agreement with, is that the errors, which have always existed in Cantr, granted, are getting to be too much. There is a lot of stuff that needs fixing, but it seems that the programmers are a little too eager to wow us with their new implementations, rather than tend to the MUCH NEEDED fixes.

And I know they're trying. I don't see how some of you can think that the programming department has meetings to think of in what ways they can screw over the players. They're volunteers, guys. They're doing their best.

[Nick]

Schme, perhaps you should start a Criticise the PD/CD thread to talk about those issues.

You'll find that devoting an entire thread to criticize a group who can lock said thread, will be difficult.
Trust me.

[jeslange]

Schme, there's a sticky to discuss the PD in this forum, if you'd like to post your concerns there. You are correct that the CR Breach forum (and e-mails too) have not been handled in a timely manner lately. We've just reorganised the PD, which will have positive effects from now on, but has taken alot of our time for the last month or so. I apologise for the lesser attention to reports during this period. We've also brought on a new member, who required us to devote some case time to training. This too should pay off later, by giving us a quality member once he's comfortable with everything. We've just gained a second new member as well, to help with the quickly growing Polish region. We'll need to devote time to his training also, but then will have a quality member for the Polish area. So, in all, I wish we could have paid a very high level of attention to all reports recently, but we've sacrificed some quality lately/now in trade for hopefully much better quality later.
Anyhow, the PD feedback sticky is the best place for PD criticisms/suggestions, since we'll be sure to see it there, whereas we might not see it if it's in a seemingly unrelated topic thread.

[Songthrush]

This will be a post which could be construed as criticism of the PD. It is not - I'd like to criticize the gameplay choices the PD currently favours. I think there's a bit of a crisis of identity going on at present in Cantr, but only a few of those who are in the heat of the programming action seem to really recognize it.

Using my overactive Cantr player's imagination, I can easily see how things currently happen with the PD:

A few regulars meet in the private PD IRC channel and start talking. What could we do to make Cantr more realistic, more exciting, more like a real simulator of real societies?

And then our volunteers start going at it: "Let's cap the resource collection, that ought to promote trade!", "Let's make tools and weapons degrade, that'll make them more valuable game items since they'll naturally become scarcer!", "Let's add tiredness so you can't possibly do all the things you want to do in one go!"

And so on. I don't know about you folks, but I see a definite pattern of "how can we make the player's life more difficult" here. This is just my vision, but how far from everyday PD actuality is it, really? And what does any of this have to do with promoting realistic societies to form?

This has everyting to do with making Cantr a pointless double-ended resource funnel, a neverending game of resource collection and consumption, and currently,it seems to me, the PD is trying very hard to find a good balance where things are always scarce and therefore people have better things to do than for instance roleplaying or effecting radical structural changes in their societies.

When gameplay changes are suggested that could truly change the way player interactions in game unfold, they are met with quite a bit of bitterness and derision: "what are you guys talking about? You want to make the game easier to play? No way, not over My Dead Body!", etc. etc. Although I do fully recognize that it's much easier to slap an IF statement in the code which will randomly limit resources than to implement even a handful of the suggestions that have come from actual players, since the latter tend to challenge the coder in a non-trivial way, they are quite a job and a handful.

How much experience do the PD's volunteer members have with game design in the context of muds or even more complex types of games? I would wager not a whole lot; yet they still don't seem at all willing to listen when their active players straight up tell them that their ideas do not work as intended, and in extreme cases are even seen as outright bugs by unsuspecting Cantrians!

[Nick]

You guys keep trying to find the motivation for the implementations the staff puts in, when really it's quite simple.
To make it more realistic.
Things degrade, land is not unlimited, people need to sleep, etc. This is why they were implemented. Not to screw anyone over.