Others have offered various insightful replies, but I want to touch on a point here:

50 hours to invest in a character seemed laughable to me in 2002.
A char would be 200 hours, a solid char would be 400 hours and a leader material would be 600+ hours.

I was also in my 20's then.

I am in my 40's now. The days of 200+ hours characters are gone. Maybe -- maybe -- you get the fresh blood from college with time to invest (and making it more interesting to rank/skill learn should help towards that) -- but you will be hard pressed to get that out of the player base that is in their 30's and 40's. Not to mention that most modern games have a playtime where 50 hours is considered damn good -- and you play through once, you don't re-roll to come back for more, the way that CF sucks you in.

Most modern games would kill to be able to attract people to multiple play-throughs of 50 hours each.


I get that this is a struggle for the soul of CF.

It is not pleasant to "water down" the hard-earned reputation. All those great memories from our youth, all the yearning to be like your idols, all the shock and awe when a powerful nemesis is coming down on you, all the satisfaction when we really get that area explore fully done...

It's a rush, no point arguing it. But, the real life wins. We've got jobs, careers, spouses, kids. We've got to adult, whether we like it or not. I feel slightly filthy arguing my point, but I have to do it regardless. Sadly, 50 hours might have to become the norm -- and hey, maybe we recapture some of the feeling again.

It's also quite possible that I'm an old fart. Maybe you'll get the high-school/college kids hooked up and 200+ hours become the norm. If that is the case, more power to them. They put in more time, they should have this victory. I shouldn't be as good as them, on 1/4 of investment. But, what happens if that doesn't work out?

I'll still grind. I'll still play, from time to time. But that CF won't be our CF and we won't recapture those feelings again.