So I've been thinking about this a bit and wanted to outline my thoughts as best I can to see what people thought.

First, I was pondering the post on new player forum. New players starts, gets waxed repeatedly in pk, feels like there is no RP, gives up leaves. Now there are many reasons he could have been losing PKs, but one that certainly happened is that he was so outclassed the opposing players skill as to make it nearly impossible to win. For instance, if I was racing NASCAR against (I had to look this up) Dale Earnhardt, it wouldn't much matter if we were both driving top of the line cars, or if he was driving a VW beetle. I'd probably still lose. I just don't have the expertise at driving that he had. The reality of the situation is that if I were trying to race against Dale Earnhardt he would have the top of the line car because he's earned it and I'd be driving the VW beetle because that is what I can afford.

So applied to CF you end up with me, a vet for the purpose of this discussion, hunting a new player and killing him easily. Not only would I probably be able to kill him with fine leather and a practice weapon, even if he was well geared, but the exact opposite is probably true. I am well geared and he has fine leather, widening the gap further. Frankly, I've put in the 10,000 hours. I'm an expert and he is not. This is the only result that makes sense from a competitive standpoint.

If I take this to the logical(ish) conclusion, I feel like you end up with a game like chess where a few hardcore experts at 10,000 hours+ can have some truly epic matches against each other. Except in this case, they play on a website that pairs them up randomly with people, so a significant portion of the time, they are just brutally destroying some 12 year old kid that just learned how to play chess and thought it might be fun to play someone online. Yes, the 12 year old could see how woefully unprepared for their opponent they are and work to improve their skills (but they probably won't due to DK effect) or they might decide the game is stupid and give up, or that "knights are overpowered" or something equally ridiculous.

I think this *does* happen in CF, but it isn't nearly as bad as something like chess. So I asked myself, Why? Self, I answered, because chess is a static game with exact rules and nothing ever changes. One can become a true expert at it and so long as you are putting in as much time as anyone else, there really is never a reason you can't remain at the very top of the field indefinitely. This isn't exactly the case with CF. Why? Because CF changes constantly.

However, while not as bad as chess, I would opine that CF has been drifting that direction for some time. There is a general lack of major changes to the game. So my "expert" knowledge of how to play a warrior from 4 years ago is probably pretty close to current were I to go play a warrior now. I would even argue that this is somewhat necessary to retain players and let people fully explore the options available. But, there are ways to set everyone back to zero again without completely changing the essence of the game. I think the ranger revamp is probably a good example of this. Old-style rangers still exist exactly as they did before. If you had expertise or were building it as forester survivalist, you can still play that combo and have it play exactly as before, but plainsrunner hunter plays so much different that while some of your expertise will translate, it isn't going to give you as big a leg up over a new player who rolls up his first character and goes "Cool! I want to play an archery character."

I think the new seasonal races is a good step in this sort of direction. From my perspective, I can't figure out how Frost giant doesn't play exactly like Fire Giant +1 con, but boy did it look like Frosties were getting their #### kicked in by that fire vuln. Each new race plays differently than any other (or I have faith that you wouldn't bother with them) so while that doesn't set anyone who plays it back to a newbie, they are certainly closer than when Twist plays his next giant sword spec. The trick is to have something that makes it different enough that not only do people not know how to play it (resetting the expert timer), but people also don't know how to play against it. I imagine this was one of the problems with Frost Giants. People knew how to fight "guy with fire vuln" and "giant" better than "giant with fire vuln" knew how to defend themselves.

Another area where this could be improved is in new areas. I will be the first to admit I'm not big on exploring. For the purposes of my example I'm going to pick on Enpolad's Garden. This isn't because I don't like it, but rather because I knew Chessmasters perfectly and liked a few very specific things from that area that are gone/changed now. That said, Enpolad's is very similar to old Chessmasters. While I understand the desire to leave a long standing area with some of the same stuff it always had, it doesn't reset the playing field as much as I'd like (for the purposes of this discussion, not what I actually enjoy. #### multi-line look descriptions that I have to comb through to find items). Enpolad's is a superior area in almost every way except one. My knowledge of chessmaster's meant that I had a significant leg up over any newbie exploring that area for the first time. It would be better if we were both wandering blind, IMHO.

So, all that being said, I think if the Imm staff made a concerted effort for one major change per year (and could continue with current rate of minor changes) we might be able to grow, expand, and keep our playerbase better with old and new players alike as the experts lose some of their advantages (but of course can regain them like anyone else) and newbies enter on a slightly leveler playing field. New stuff also generates good buzz (as opposed to say douche bag player behavior and imm conspiracy nonsense) which would also help attract, retain, and recall players.

What's that I hear? Shaman revamp on the way?

Thanks for taking the time to read my wall of text,

Tac