limit spawning in multilingual towns

[Jos Elkink]

Weighting the first two chars of new players not only to be in larger populations, but also in majority language populations.

So the idea is for the first two characters of new players to significantly lower the probability that those chars spawn in locations where their language is in the minority.

[Tiamo]

Wouldn't this lead to minority populations be at an even bigger disadvantage than they already are at by being outnumbered in the first place?
It is like two fluids that don't mix, even when stirred. They will eventually be separated again, but in Cantr it will be city by city, not island by island.

[BZR]

I think it's a good idea.

Cantr is very confusing to newbies, spawning in an exotic city makes it even worse.


But - it needs to be balanced
city A - 10 polish, 10 english - neither polish nor english newbie chars spawn.

city B - 18 polish, 2 english - only polish chars

city C - 2 polish, 18 english - only english

Characters of regular players - no limitations

[Jos Elkink]

Yes, you are right, and that is a good point. It is a minor adjustment, though, from the perspective of the minority in the town, and a big adjustment for new players. Note that we're only talking about chars of new players, not other players extending their player base.

[tiddy ogg]

Yes, Cantr is difficult enough to start playing, and if you're faced with a load of incomprehensible fellow characters, it'll be bound to put you off.
Is it easy enough to do, though?

[Jos Elkink]

Yeah, it should be, I think

[joo]

I agree.

[Tiamo]

From the stats discussion:

^I think a simple way to make the world smaller is have newspawns go where they are wanted. Perhaps by creating "spawning pools" where if given proper care, such as by throwing food in the pool, a town has an increased chance of gaining a newspawn.

Furthermore, I think that when you make people have to wait to get their account approved, it detracts a great amount of people from getting into the game. As someone mentioned earlier...most people just want to see what Cantr is about and if they have to wait to get their account approved, odds are a person will just go explore some other mmo game.

Newspawns going where they are wanted and either a way to allow a person to be instantly accepted, or a way for a person to see what the game is like while they are waiting on their account I think will increase the amount of people who play the game.

Perhaps we can have accounts instantly approved, but bar a new character from talking/making notes until the account is ok'd by a person?

This is also about the newspawn formula.

[Doug R.]

I don't think limiting actions would encourage someone to play.

As for the original suggestion, I agree that it's a good one. It can't hurt, and it can only help (and that qualifies as good in my book, now-a-days)

However, it needs to be understood that spawning in an area with lots of people that speak your language doesn't guarantee anything. As Jos said, you get more noise, and more people to kill you when you break a law because you didn't know to read the notes.

I and others have suggested in the past that spawning be primarily be based on desire of the local population. If newspawns are wanted, it's almost guaranteed that they'll be noticed, valued, and tolerated by somebody. That, I think, is the best suggestion, and the one that puts newspawns in a better situation.

[Idriveayugo]

I and others have suggested in the past that spawning be primarily be based on desire of the local population.

Myself included

[viktor]

though we don't try to make the game too realistic, we have a lot of realistic features popping up, i think adding in new equations to take into account being the minoority language of a popualtions of a location would be un necessary, each language spawning should be calculated independant of the populations of other languages in the same location, even in reality sometimes the minority outbreeds the majority and becomes the new majority, not too common but it does happen
in cantr 1+1=2+
not 1+1=2.0
if 2 people from one land travel and settle in a new land where they are the only 2 that speak thier language, does the indigenious population always automatically strap them to a table and sterilise them? that would be the analogy of changing the current spawning system,
honestly if you want to limit the spawning of a minority population in a town, it should be done in game through fascism like the real world does it, trust me it works i played zeus darwin, enough said