>However, you are supposedly "Game-Balance guy", and its
>obvious you are blinded by your love of your wife (happens to
>us all), and can't see how the rewards she gives out
>unbalances the game.

Except... she actually doesn't, by and large.

In Fort in recent memory there's Jack Blaguar. That's admittedly a pretty good reward, although there have always been concurrent quest forms in other cabals.

And... that's it. Or it came from someone other than Baer.

I keep hearing that people in Fort have rewards that they actually don't. I don't know what to make of it other than that there's a segment of the playerbase that amount to the equivalent of catty, gossipy soccer moms. They can't hack it as players so apparently they make #### up.

And what can you even do about that? People believe what they want.

>You are also biased because your mortals tend to also get
>hooked up. If you went back to just playing stock mortals, I
>think the playerbase here would probably agree you are one of,
>if not the best, pk'er on the MUD. Unfortunately no one is
>ever going to see that because every character you play has an
>asterisk next to it, at least in my book.

Rather than give in to my natural reaction, I'll attempt to give this a serious response.

First: how do you even go about that?

Second: I have played "stock" characters, and even the last couple characters I've had that have had some kind of reward had managed what amounts to a lot (e.g. a hundred or more) of kills before ever seeing any kind of mechanical reward.

Interesting thing? It doesn't make a difference. At all. A character who beats people will get OOC or forum rants about how over-rewarded they are, even if they actually have nothing, and even if they beat someone who themselves does have some kind of solid reward. This occurs whether it's a power combo character or something that nobody else would have played on a dare.

Other than just not play, it's not possible for me to make people happy in this respect. At one point this bothered me, but I'm over it now.

>What I see right now is this MUD hemorrhaging players as well
>as long-time staff, because of everyone's perception of
>shadiness that pretty much centers around either you, or your
>wife. If you can't see that the current situation has been and
>is detrimental to the MUD, I am not sure what to tell you.

To the extent that that's true (and I'm not convinced that it is), I think it's perception. Why would it make sense to encourage the gossipy soccer mom faction by giving them what they want as a reward for (mostly) making #### up?

>Step back from being an imm, be just a player, and get back to
>enjoying the game. God knows you've earned it with the work we
>all know you put in.

I'm not inclined to let "Tolnum" (whoever you are) make those decisions for me.