I am going to hit a few topics, this is not a rant or whine by any means. I am truly looking for a good discussion so we can keep this game fun and exciting to play.

-Battles-
It used to be, atleast when I was new, that when you got ganged it was a rare occasion or you were just fighting imperials. In my eyes, you can attribute this to the drive to win. Winning the fight for most people is the most important thing, because if you don't win you will lose something. So, now adays, it seems like if you aren't in a group fighting you are just a meat shield. I guess my question is..What can be done to curb the massive groups (on all sides, this isn't directed any cabal) that just run over people?

Possible Ideas..
- Honestly I am not sure where I got this..it could have been dio's or somewhere else...maybe even Challen. Basically, you would limit the number of people fighting one person. You can even relate this to D&D 3rd edition, in that you can only have 8 people surrounding one guy. That is determined from a scale system of area and squares occupied, which isn't available in the mud. So, you would need a way to measure the size of the group without using numbers. I think that using size as the key would work well. Since each race has a value of size, it would be easy to calculate. As an example (no basis for actual implementation), a gnome is value 1, human 2, and giant 3. You can have up to say 9 size points fighting one person. So, you can take and plug in the various combinations and see how it works. This would also make reduce and enlarge play more of a role other than just bash-modifiers.
- Modify how autoassist works, by allowing an option after the command. This option would be a players name that you would assist instead of the default group leader. If no name is specified it would default to the group leader. This might make group fighting more than just a attack one guy thing. You could split your attacks easily, which would make it more dynamic and less of a steamroll.
- Something we were thinking about on RiftShadow, was using a ranked system for the groups. You would have a front line, and a rear line, but that would take into account weapon sizes. Medium and short weapons would be in the front rank, polearms and spears would be in the rear rank...etc. It would also make a protection of sort, being that you can't hit the rear rank from combat. As front rank people die, the rear ranks would filter into their positions. Anyways, this is a radical change and would need lots of discussion.

These are just a few things that were sitting on my brain, but I truly
believe this is something that needs to be looked at before it ruins the game for many people. It is already working towards..."Hey man, I didn't get ganged today! Can you believe that?".

-Pre-hate Cabals-
This is quite a wide topic, but it can be the root of many problems. It seems like many cabals are setup to pre-hate other cabals. This creates an expectation on the individual in the cabal to be ruthless to the player at the other end of the funstick. For instance, many things happen that you wouldn't normally do to anyone else you didn't "hate". This creates only frustration and out of character hatred, and also forms visicious cycles. Numerous examples can be cited, from the minor full loot, which I think anyone can accept if it's warranted. This is a game, though, and sportsmanship is a part of the game. People shouldn't be running around, killing the same person every 30 minutes and sacrificing all his regear items. This has a definate affect on the fun stick and just jades people to the game. This isn't something that can be fixed easily, as it's more just a players choice. Although, things can be done to curb it and discourage it....again these are just ideas..

- Discipline the player from wanting to use get all corpse. Someone sometime ago, mentioned about adding lag to getting things from the corpse. I think this idea has merit. If you know you only have a few moments to get what you want from the corpse, you aren't going to worry about the crap gear. You will go straight for the juicy stuff. If you also knew you were going to get lagged, you wouldn't stick around to fully loot someones junk gear fear of someone catching you with your pants down. Honestly, if we could get some discussion surrounding this idea, I would be happy.

In closing, I just want to point out that this is a game. This isn't real life, a game isn't supposed to be frustrating it's supposed to be fun. If someone isn't having fun, then they will go play a FPS. I for one would like to see CF retain it's gamers as the text based games die off, but it's going to be much harder when the less frustrating games are more enticing.

Gabe