I appreciate the rebuttal. Yeah, I was back and forth from other things when I posted that just some time ago and got slightly distracted, so didn't thoroughly explain at least a few things that I wanted to. Here goes:

"It really pains me to do it but I'm going to quote TLB #1. It might be more realistic if the game had a defecate command. Would that make it more fun or interesting? Not really. The point being that realism *alone* isn't a good enough reason for something to be in the game. Now, there may well be reasons *other* than realism for why excessive ganging is a good thing...but that's a different argument."

I agree. I believe that is why PK ranges exist. There are a lot of battles fought between realism, funism and playability...ism. The mere fact that you can go for eternity without sleeping if you're not fighting and just making sure you eat/drink is something that was in the stock-code and never changed because, although more realistic, it would just be stupid.

"Looking over logs is always educational. But I'm not convinced that getting ganged alot is always the gang-ee's fault. To take a page from history, consider the sylvan gang that chased Valguarnera all over Thera before eventually killing him. Old-school transmuter w/ air focus, shaman, ranger, two invokers. Air form to scout, shaman to summon, ranger to snare, invokers to spam pebble. Now, if all Valguarnera wanted to do is avoid dying, yeah, he could probably have accomplished that by just hiding somewhere and twiddling his thumbs. With that group after him, though, doing anything remotely productive or interesting suddenly becomes *extremely* risky."

Agree with you 100% there, though I did say that there are some situations where there is absolutely NOTHING you can do to avoid being ganged. Sometimes it is just a fact of life... but there are occasions where people will whine about being ganged when it was under their control to not be. That's what I was attempting to address.

"Now, imagine he still has some ranking to do and that the gang immediately goes for him again as soon as he unghosts. (That part didn't happen, but judging by peoples' complaints it does nowdays.) How could he avoid being ganged? Quit or hide. Nobody's a fan of characters quitting when the odds are against them, and hiding's just boring."

There really isn't much that can be done. Once you die, you're that much more vulnerable. An experienced player will be able to avoid further PK, but let's face it... If you were killing fully geared, how will you survive half-naked? You won't, unless the odds quickly tip to your favor. I believe this is something that has been all too often neglected by the Immortals. They feel that the ghosting, get all corpsing, PKing aspect is 'fine' the way it is.

Our esteemed Trogdor fanatic Zulghinlour recently said something about 'get all corpse' not being a problem... that he assumes everything is gone, and if it hits him the right way, he'll take a few days off from his mortal character, and he suggests that "regular" players roll up something else to play for a time to change it up a bit. Good advice, but what about those that only play one mortal at a time? A physical limitation imposed on the player, by the player, for whatever reason. I still think that get all corpse is horribly flawed, but I understand his (Zulg) and the ImmStaff's position on it all.

Gabe mentioned an idea that he heard from RiftShadow. Of course it's not an original idea, but it is still a good one. Actually making the room have physical dimensions and causing a group's formation, or person's placement in the room, to have an effect on how many could fight one another, and so forth. I think this is a good idea, and theoretically seems fair and good, but in practice I don't think it would work out. Here's a suggestion, however:

***** LIGHTBULB
To make it that the room's size, everyone in its race, and whatever, would actually cause combat to go differently, would require the combat system to be rewritten. This idea seems a more simplistic, fair and practical. What about allowing "interference" to take its toll. On CF, everything hits in rounds. One round lag this, two round lag that. People don't have their own set timers pushed into the idler that causes them to hit on staggered schedules. No, we all hit each round, or at least attempt to. Even special things like owaza and such, hit on the round... with prep time. So, the concept of 'intereference' would discourage ganging, and otherwise unfair combat, by doing this:

Go with me on this. Let's say we have an Assassin, whom just gets jumped by two Warriors and a Necromancer. The Necromancer summons him, the Warriors bash, and while the assassin is lagged the Necro is maledicting. Not doing much damage, except for the actual bash keeping the assassin in the room, the warriors wait for the Necro to do its thing. So, while the assassin is lagged, the Necro blinds, diseases him, etc. Now the warriors figure there's no real need to keep him in the room by bashing and it is time to unleash their offensive power. They're both sword specs.

So they decide to flurry, flurry, flurry, for whatever reason. I am not sure I ever fought two sword specs at one time, and I am even less sure that I ever saw two sword specs use flurry and hit on the same exact round. But, like I said, go with me on this.

So they flurry, flurry, flurry. I have no seen the code, but I am sure that it is phenomenally easier to check who's in the room, the target, what the others are going to do on the round, and to cause some interference. So if they both were to flurry on the same round, they might wind up clashing swords. Perhaps they wouldn't cause one another any physical harm, but they may at the very least get in each other's way.

See where I'm going with this? It's a lot different, and more practical I feel, than Gabe's above-mentioned idea (Though it's still a good one).

This can be applied to many, many things. Just about every "special" attack that you have to type something in to have an effect... This would ignore NORMAL round attacks. So if someone tried to double thrust while you were flurrying, it might come into play... or if someone is trying to attempt an owaza the same round. Basically it still seems like it would be a bitch to code, but maybe this in some way will give an idea to the Staff, that they may modify and decide on things. *shrug*

(In the end, by the way, the assassin gets away, binds his wounds thereby curing his blindness, hides, stalks, and assassinates at least one of them. )

***** /LIGHTBULB

"I could be wrong, but I think the complainers aren't so much concerned with "normal" ganging. By that I mean ganging that is RP-motivated, doesn't involve multi-killing, and isn't the *only* way those characters are ever involved in PK. From the complainers' point of view, they see a horde of good-aligned heros that all group up and go multi-kill any evil that ranks in their range, each member of the gang rarely ever fighting when not part of a large group. Surely you can see how that might get frustrating."

Well, I believe you said in a previous post that you refer to 'Team Good' because generally when you're of Good alignment you're part of 'Team Good' by default... but it isn't true necessarily with Evil. At any rate, yes I understand how it is frustrating.

CF, in and of itself, has a whole bunch of double standards, created and supported by the people that play it. Goodies complain that all Evils/Empire/Whatever do is go around and kill Goodies, in huge gangs. Evils complain that all the Marans do is go around and kill ANY Evil, or that Team Good only hunts in packs.

Who's wrong? Nobody. Who's right? Nobody. The simple fact is, Carrion Fields is a game. Carrion Fields is a very strategic game, at that. I don't see anything wrong with an Evil being killed by 5 Goodies, or a Good being killed by 5 Evils... or an Evil being killed by 5 Evils, for that matter. Repeatedly. I don't see anything wrong with it because that is, quite simply, the name of the game. If you want to keep killing someone that is naked... go for it. The CF code allows this, and in all of the years I have played, it has never been a HUGE problem. People are not CONSTANTLY multikilled... and if they are then they should know better.

You're right, I am a little black and white with certain things, but I think certain things are quite honestly just that simple. If you want to involve yourself in CF, expect to die. If you want to play a big bad evil guy, then expect that Floofi's henchmen are going to hunt you down like the pig you are, repeatedly killing you, despite your gear. If they didn't take advantage of your half-dressed status, they'd be stupid. No mercy. I think Evils show Goodies the same consideration.