Random topic for discussion...

I think cabals are one of the best parts of the game, and one of the things that really draw new players in. They're also one of our big differentiators from most other games, ignoring for the moment other MUDs inspired by CF -- sure, you've got clans in every MMO in the world, but how many of them have a special purpose and unique powers that no one else has? I'm not sure that I would still be playing CF today if my very first character hadn't been caballed at level 15.

Over the years there's been a trend to push cabals more and more to being a high level thing, which I consider a mistake.

So:

1) How can we make cabals more accessable to new players, without diluting their nature or reducing the appeal of being caballed? For example, if we let everyone pick their cabal and instantly join in the academy, cabals would be a ton more accessable, but I'm not sure that'd be worth the price.

2) How can we create more value to lower level members in cabals? The olllld raiding system did a great job of this, even if the new raiding system is far superior in every other way.

My problem with cabals is that you are basically required to spend X amount of time playing the game. Also, the game is too focused around raid/retrieve - which doesn't cater to every class (especially ones I like to play).

Case in point - conjurers & rangers. Conjurers, you basically have to go through the trouble of conjuring up your stuff, using up some wands, then if things don't time out properly you have to go wait off the timer, reconjure, etc. They're much better at hunting - in general - rather than making sure they have well timed servitors for defenses/raids. Its annoying to have people raid you when you have 5 hours left on your timers.

Rangers are sorta a nuff said type of thing. If you aren't an outlander there is almost no benefit whatsoever to joining a cabal.

I think you should make more inductors and more tiers. I like the idea of the cabals with tier systems and I fail to see why there can't be more like it. I think five or six inductors or "elders" per cabal would be cool and then you have your "leaders" who can do the promoting (imms included). That takes pressure off the leaders so they can do stuff like policy and actually lead instead of "waste" time interviewing when that could be Elder jobs. When I say inducted I mean you get to go in, retrieve, get one power (like a squire). I personally do not feel like being inducted should be something that is A) hard or B) requires much time at all to occur. It would also be a great way to tell people when they are doing a good job, you get promoted and get a new skill.

Lots of leaders have placed level 20 requirements and I think that's dumb. Those are my thoughts.

As it is, it's mostly a crap shoot. I have not met an actually difficult interview in ages. All you really need to do is find the leader.

>1) How can we make cabals more accessible to new players,
>without diluting their nature or reducing the appeal of being
>caballed? For example, if we let everyone pick their cabal
>and instantly join in the academy, cabals would be a ton more
>accessible, but I'm not sure that'd be worth the price.

Allow, for most cabals, automatic induction at, for sake of discussion, level 20. Then apply the maxim of easy in, easy out. This would need to be tailored to each cabal. Scion and Scarab would not likely see any change --too secretive and small. Empire is fine as is, i.e., take the Oath and prove your worth. Village took a step in this direction with the change to Applicants. However, I would go further in terms of automation. I believe it is easy for an immortal to check if a wannabe villager has a mage kill or two. I would move one more step and allow the wannabe to visit the giant and ask for applicant status. Make the mage kill check fully automatic (maybe a magic gear check as well). That's it. The applicant proves his worth from within, gets to enjoy some of the perks of being in a cabal and also has the responsibilities --help retrieve as applicable and slay applicants of enemy cabals. I can imagine each cabal having a unique take on such applicants and what is needed to move forward (or to get kicked out). I have ideas for automated induction (and criteria) for the other cabals if any imm is interested in hearing them.

>2) How can we create more value to lower level members in
>cabals? The olllld raiding system did a great job of this,
>even if the new raiding system is far superior in every other
>way.

As hinted at above I think they have value. You kill enemy applicants and help defend/retrieve as needed. Having to defend/retrieve is a necessary drawback to being in a cabal (with full or partial membership). And the level 20 cap makes such applicants useful I think. I also believe this is a nice progression for newer players. Learn the ropes in the academy and environs, come of age at level 11, learn to survive plus flesh out character and (hopefully) role by level 20 such that you gain applicant status at the cabal that fits your role... Beyond that you must grow and prove your worth to get full status.

One other thought, many (and I do this too) do not join a cabal until late as it interferes with leveling. That is fine but then the trade-off is that you can not take advantage of the auto induction route. This can only be done at level 20 (or some smaller range). But this point does not speak to the new player so I think it's a non issue anyway.

First, something that rubs me off about cabals, is the idea that all caballed characters should be constantly raiding. I will give you an example. When I was playing Gharahka (Imperial), we had a big group going through Aran'gird. I had personally never been through the entirety of it. 6 imperials on, one fortress player, no imperial lowbies. Fortress had lowbies. Ok, so we are doing our thing, I personally was having fun exploring the area, maran lowbies were ranking, dunno what the sole maran was doing. Ok, some imm switches into inners, and starts bitching at us for not holding orb. Viable role choice? Yes, ofcourse. Imperials are about dominating other. But let's inspect the outcome. We come out of Aran'gird, head to fort. The single maran gets the living daylights ganged out of him. By six imperials. I am 100% sure he did not have fun summon/ganged by six. We roll the maran inner in like 4 rounds. Head to Palace, down orb, set two sets of hero cents, and healer camps at Centurions healing.
5 or so Maran lowbies come up and start pounding on cents, but 45 minutes later they have not made it to the Vanquisher. Maran lowbies quit, and by this time also 3 out of 6 imperials have got bored and quit. Needless to say, the hero maran quit infuriated, since 6 man gangs often need lots of eq, and the guy was likely looted to the bones.
So, Empire dominated, GO ROLEPLAY! But who had fun? Did the imm in question enjoy seeing the 6 on 1? Or cutting off ranking from the mid levels? Perhaps the empowerment imm of the healer enjoyed seeing him do something of a great purpose to his cabal (healing centurions)? Dunno, what concerns me, is that none of the players did.

I like cabals in which it's possible to decide yourself when you want to raid, and when not. What fun is it raiding ragers 6 on 1? The powerless dude will quit anyways. I liked Nexus since it was never advised to raid an empty cabal. When I see possible cabals to raid, if raiding is what interests me, my first pick is always the one with the most defenders, not the least. If there is no way to win that one, then perhaps progress to the next most. The ideal situation being, that raid-counter raiding will happen enough so I can leave empty cabals alone.

Bottom line, I would like to see raiding cabals rewarded when there's actual risk involved, instead of pushing players to fish in the barrel. The reasoning I like to use (being an evil player) is that I'm so ####ing awesome, that it's pointless destroying a cabal when there's no one to see how awesome I am. Or that I'm such an evil bastard, that it will waste my talents to go kill the watcher if there are no maran corpses to desecrate (sp?) on my way!

Of this rewarding system, it does not have to be something huge or hardcoded. No divine prowess of amazing mongoosiness. Just mayby, if an imm catches it and thinks it was something risky pulled off. Or mayby even if it was risky but wasn't pulled off, a small nod, cb Good job, mayby small imm exp. Hell, just drop 50-100 imm exp for every participant, I know it would make me happy.

This was a longer rant than I thought, and will have to continue once my class ends, but I swear eventually I will get to the point where the cabal system is made super appealing for mid-low level players. :P

To be continued...

Ok then, now that I have established that I really dislike how raiding undefended cabals is encouraged, I will explain the benefits of changing this.

- Less pendulum, if you log on alone, it's nice to have your item
- No need for mid-low level characters to endlessly retrieve while a
huge enemy hero group just rolls over the inner in 2 rounds. It gets
old really quick.
- Risk taking encouraged more (awesome!!)

So, what would I wish to see done? I previously mentioned that small boons (like minor imm exp gains, whatever), or at least positive acknowledgment of characters who take the raid where it's rough. Also, cut slack in the why aren't all the cabals raided already department (also Empire).

Other hardcoded changes could also be made. Specifically in cabal guardian mechanics. Right now, cabal guardians are fairly weak in the hp department, and geared to have a high damage output. They are kind of like an extra boost in damage output. What I would like to see happen, is make their offense weaker, defense higher. Destructor's flurry will rip apart most level 30-40s. Nova from archmage. Divine retribution could outright kill a level 40 duergar, if he does not have lots of preps. So, what you would see is cabal inners with mayby half or even 30% the damage output, double the hp. The skills they would use, would be tactical advantages designed to help a defender. Blindness, dirt kick, eyejab, rescue (perhaps some form of distract or whatever mongoose or dillo has), dispel, various lagging skills etc. etc, basicly anything that makes it easier for the defenders to fight, instead of just lowering the attackers hp by a set amount.

Benefits of this would be to allow lower level raiders to actually participate in taking the item, since they would not be torn apart by the inner. Ofcourse it would take level 35 character longer than a level 51 to kill the inner, but it would still be conceivable, even with defenders involved. It would also imo make taking on large raids easier, things like 5 on 2 raids usually turn into a huge cluster#### really quick, since by the time defenders have prepped and get there, the inner is writhing and unless the defenders are already grouped and at 100% hp, it turns into two quick 5 on 1 spankdowns. After the change, perhaps people would get blinded to make directing harder, the inner might intercept/rescue and ease off the damage the defenders are taking, and in general give the defender more leeway to use tactics against the raiders, but without outright beefing the inner into some super monster of certain death.

This same could be applied to outer guards. They should do more tactical skills like lag, dirt kick etc., and less straight up melee damage. Face it, the outer's melee damage is what kills any possibilites to retrieve for low level characters. To make it a more viable feat for even characters in their teens, also make the out guards tank worse. I am kind of torn on whether it is a good idea, but outer guards could also have damage reduction that goes up based on level. Level 20 people would see 20% reduction, and heroes would see 51%.

As an additional thing for inners, perhaps give them prog more firepower when there is no one who can defend against the raider. Ghosts would have to count here. If there is no one in the range of the raider in question, the inner will be progging nasty stuff, making it a bitch to kill. This would take care of lame tactics, like sending the unopposed level 37 dude to grind down the inner, just to force the solo hero to try and retrieve from 5 enemies. And to cut down the keen interest in taking items from undefended cabals.

to address than many of the ideas I've heard so far, including many of my own.

I'm not a coder, so I don't know the answer at all to this... but would it be difficult to scale the damage output by inner guardians, much in the way that the heat and smoke does in the FoN of the past, or like conglacion spell. Where these things barely hurt low level characters, but can pump out DEMO's at hero.

I agree, low-to-mid level characters don't stand a chance against inner guardians. The question is, should they stand a chance? Do we really want low-mid level characters being able to take cabal items at will? That isn't a question I can answer, because I'm not sure how it'd play out.

I'd say, that depending on the guardian and your character, most are unsoloable at hero without considerable rest. I'm ok with that, but it also means that 4 level 40's will get completely toasted, and I think that should be a pretty viable raiding party. I also think a large group of level 30's (8ish) should be able to raid by sheer numbers... That isn't to say it wouldn't be difficult/dangerous, but somewhere between impossible (now) and easy might be preferable. If you could mix the two, meaning a hero could raid with a level 40 and 3 level 30's to achieve good results (not corpses of the younger raiders) I think that might be the best of both worlds...

>I'd say, that depending on the guardian and your character,
>most are unsoloable at hero without considerable rest.

For what it's worth, a lot more of my characters can solo all the guardians they want to kill without considerable rest than can't.

That being said, most of your characters that I've known about have been the kinds of characters that really struggle to solo some/all guardians, so maybe that's just a matter of bias in character choice. A lot of the best characters for PK are awful at fighting mobs, and I usually pick characters who can do some amount of exploring on their own, thus, aren't abysmal at fighting mobs/guardians.

I think cabal guards should actually be *harder* to solo against no defenders. But once they have defenders, they should offer more tactical advantage, instead of sheer damage output. With big groups, let's say 5 on 4, I think the attacker actually has the advantage, since he can prep and more often than not possibly kill the inner if the defense is not prepared, since the raiders will kill the outer/inner before there is time to organise. It would be more fun (at least for me) to actually fight the defenders over the item.

It's definitely an interesting idea, but I'm not sure exactly how you'd balance it. For example, some cabals have powers which are big helps in a defense, others don't -- it's a lot harder to raid against one Scion shifter than it is to raid against one Maran shifter, for example, all things being equal.

It's also a lot harder to raid against one Hunsobo than it is to raid against one random Imperial Blade, even if they're both equal-level characters.

I could see myself actually wanting the newbies in my cabal to log off because I'd have a better chance to defend successfully without them. In some cases this is already true. :) I'm not sure if that's good for the game, either.

I'm not saying the idea is dead in the water, but I don't see the way to make it work at the moment, either.

Simple things, like on/off whether there are any possible defenders, or nil. If nil, you get the shaft, since there's no real point in raiding (from funstick pov). In any other case just make them work the same whether it's 5 on 3, 5 on 1, or 2 on 6. Bottom line is, it would help all levels across the board if the inners were more about defense and giving defenders the tactical advantage, less about being omgwtfbbq in their own right (read: spamming disrupt organ). Basic idea, that the defenders are the actual problem you face.

And well, if the defenders do not know how to play their cards, they will be just as reamed in a defense situation. You know this. A major part of cf is PK, and well, I would imagine that even though they are not very skilled at it, they will want to fight.

I remember years ago in 99 or whatever when I was still very bad at pk, I had a character named Implagur, Sylvan tiger pre shifter split. With insects and pounce it was awesome. Even though I couldn't pk my way out of a paper bag, I was very lethal. And man did I ever try everything. I bet I died at least 20 times due to insecting myself off volley when raiding empire. And chargeset unspeaks ftw! But still, I liked to fight, even if it meant that I died a lot.

Bottom line, if cabal inners would be toned down in offense, given more defense, some tactical skills, and offensive power which only fires when no defenders are in the range of the raiders.

To give you couple of theme fitting examples:

Archmage with no defenders is in transmuter or necro mode. He will either scourge, blind, energy drain, mayby throw in even forget just be major pain.
Archmage with defenders (one is enough) will turn into some sort of defensive form (with not quite as much damage reduction ofcourse), and use intercept or distract.

Destructor with no defenders will be a flurry/pincer machine bashing to boot. To be really annoying, perhaps make him pick the non-bash protected target and bash;flurry :P
Destructor with defenders will utilise skills like eyejab, lash, cutoff, strip and various other utility skills. Also mayby double block for the defenders? He will also target people who are not fighting to bring them into combat.

Watcher with no defenders will be in aggressive paladin mode, and do all the things it does now, perhaps with a side dish of strike of faith, and higher frequency of divine ret/light of the heavens.
Watcher with defenders would be in defensive paladin mode, using perhaps a rescue spinoff that does not lag the defender, templars mid hiltsmash etc, perhaps dish out mend wounds to the defenders.

While doing all this, the base melee would be reduced some, to make them less scary. Ofcourse there's the issue that a newbie defender recieves a smaller boon, but isn't that the way it's with all things? I bet you will get way more mileage out of an unholy blessed sword stick than most people would :P. Also, since most effects are beneficial targeted skills to the defending group, the progs would have diminishing returns with the number of defenders. Right now with targetted offensive progs, the progs have a diminishing returns with the number of offenders.

Damn, the more I type the better this idea is starting to look! I should just keep on going ;)

If we like the trend of making things more newbie friendly, I don't think we like this idea. I like parts of it, granted, but the whole "when the situation is this it works like this", and "when the situation is that it works like that" thing just doesn't do it for me.

As I said, I like parts of this idea - I just don't think things like melee damage should change radically based on the defensive situation. I have a hard enough time trying to explain things to my friends when I encourage them to play - I don't need yet another bump to the learning curve. Inners should be inners, outers should be outers, and their relative strength and weakness should be endogenous. Change their attributes to function within a modified system, but don't make it any harder to figure out wtf is going on.

You know I <3 you, Elm. No malice intended here.

T

And make inner less offensive and more defensive in general.

That bastard blackfire nova'd me two rounds in a row, would've been three but I fled after the first nova and went back for more. There were four rounds of combat and I got blackfire nova'd three times. Course I'm glad it didn't soften me and THEN nova me. And I just wanted to rob the pit... too bad I found out I couldn't.

Also I remember being in Hell and ragers came to take the Key and there were three corpses at the Eye of the Storm before I could get out of Hell.

All in all my ONE real complaint is that I get no XP for raiding with my NONE character and that annoys me. I only needed 300 to level and raiding against Empire as a level 36 would've been a sweet way to level. I LOVE how each inner is different and feels like an actual member of the cabal. That kicks major ass.

My second semi-complaint is more like a suggestion. With my squire ranger I couldn't do anything in a raid against scion or empire and it took me a LONG time to kill the outer (due to my expertise choice). Which is fine... I guess. But Scions need some wilderness and shadows outside their cabal and I'd be tickled pink if all outers were in some plains-like wilderness (Spire not included or hell, include it and make it like finding herbs in the park in Galadon) or if the maran cabal outer was considered mountains (avalanching the retrievers could suck. But hey! Avalanche the defenders). You could even make that scion outer in a cave and that'd be realistic to me. Make it tainted too if you want. That'd be neat. In fact... I think that's gonna be my Santa Zulg request...

And why do all the evil cabals hover around Hamsah? Why can't one be up near Udgaard? Let's spread some chaos somewhere besides the Eastern Road of Newbie Death.

oops... didn't mean to ramble.

as a Fortress bard.

http://www.qhcf.net/cforum/logs/vpost.pl?75512

What sort of character *are* good for fighting guardians.... My last few high ranked characters all struggled mightily with the guardians they were fighting, and I thought at least some of then *should* have been able to handle a guardian solo...

Tac Hands/Exotics Fire Giant Outlander: Couldn't take the Executioner while unwanted without at least 1 rest. Mostly it just wasn't even a possibility... I'd have put this one high on my list for killing a non-casting mob, but I didn't prep much (at all) with him.

Juol: Tac2 Hands/Swords Fire Giant Outlander: Same as tac, possibly worse, hard to say since this character was ruined before he spent much time at hero.

Nefla: Pre-barrier/regen changes I could take down the Executioner pretty handily through prep + regen + shifting between cobra and tiger, and post she was still a viable raider and explorer, but mostly because cobra regen and because the cheetah had better defenses than the lion.

Fordun: Goodie dwarf tribbie, flails and maces, sanc/healing pendant + gates + pretty heavy prep usage. I couldn't raid Outlander for #### with him. I *assumed* I would have enough DR/Healing to take on the spirit, but that wasn't true, and it tore me up the few times I tried it without a bunch of help.

(Name I can't remember): Empire dagger mace arial, balance of sisters and striking (didn't get to striking). She was very useful in PK, but the maran inner's divine retribution destroyed me the few times I went in with Hunsobo... She was very useful in PK, but I didn't really expect much in the mob fighting/exploring area.

Noellia: Wood-elf Bard, Nexus. I could pretty much stand at the big D all day and not have to worry about him killing me, but then I wasn't really doing a lot of damage that way either... She was a very mixed bag as far as exploring goes, high defense, but low offense output. She did alright, but work killed her before I had a chance to hero and really get out there exploring like I intended.

Now 4 out of the 6 of these I guessed would be able to take down their opponents inner pretty handily, and only Nefla was true in that regard. Noellia was a bit of a suprise in that she did much better offensively against the big D then I probably would have guessed.

Where is my thinking off?



Now 4 our of these 5 I would have guess would be able to raid semi-comfortably solo against their opponents

I thought about putting this in an email just to you instead, but apparently you don't care for email :P

>Tac Hands/Exotics Fire Giant Outlander: Couldn't take the
>Executioner while unwanted without at least 1 rest. Mostly it
>just wasn't even a possibility... I'd have put this one high
>on my list for killing a non-casting mob, but I didn't prep
>much (at all) with him.

Not a great tank; more the kind of character that wins PKs because he does so much damage the other guy runs out of hit points first. It's hard for that kind of style to stand up to guardian HP.

>Juol: Tac2 Hands/Swords Fire Giant Outlander: Same as tac,
>possibly worse, hard to say since this character was ruined
>before he spent much time at hero.

I think this character probably could've done it once up to speed.

>Nefla: Pre-barrier/regen changes I could take down the
>Executioner pretty handily through prep + regen + shifting
>between cobra and tiger, and post she was still a viable
>raider and explorer, but mostly because cobra regen and
>because the cheetah had better defenses than the lion.

Yeah, that's about what I'd expect -- tiger is a good tank for an offense form, but that's not saying much. It'd need a lot of healing to do it solo in one go, and cobra provides that nicely.

>Fordun: Goodie dwarf tribbie, flails and maces, sanc/healing
>pendant + gates + pretty heavy prep usage. I couldn't raid
>Outlander for #### with him. I *assumed* I would have enough
>DR/Healing to take on the spirit, but that wasn't true, and it
>tore me up the few times I tried it without a bunch of help.

I think this character'd be able to do it with some of the right tactical choices. Picking the right weapons to wield for the Spirit would be one of the biggest. It shouldn't be too hard to find a couple maces that'd work pretty well and rock out the drum.

Note, I'd expect maledictions to just not go his way once in a while and have him be forced to retreat, but I think you should be able to do it in one go let's say 80% of the time.

>(Name I can't remember): Empire dagger mace arial, balance of
>sisters and striking (didn't get to striking). She was very
>useful in PK, but the maran inner's divine retribution
>destroyed me the few times I went in with Hunsobo... She was
>very useful in PK, but I didn't really expect much in the mob
>fighting/exploring area.

Yeah, dagger is another one of those 'sort of a good tank against PCs because they run out of hp first' kinds of things that doesn't really stand up well enough to a guardian. Your legacies also are purely PK focused and not particularly useful for fighting mobs.

(Not that there's anything wrong with building a character that way, just, you know what you're getting.)

>Noellia: Wood-elf Bard, Nexus. I could pretty much stand at
>the big D all day and not have to worry about him killing me,
>but then I wasn't really doing a lot of damage that way
>either... She was a very mixed bag as far as exploring goes,
>high defense, but low offense output. She did alright, but
>work killed her before I had a chance to hero and really get
>out there exploring like I intended.

I think this character'd be able to do most of the guardians given enough time, but you're right in that there's not a lot of pure damage coming out of a bard and she'd probably shine more in a group vs. group kind of raid. There are angles you could work here to put out the damage faster, but in general raiding solo with a bard is sloooow. It still generally can be done in one go if you save your mana for healing and just beat it down hand to hand, but...

Bards look a little better vs. the cabals with multiple lower-hp guardians (Nexus, Empire).


>I thought about putting this in an email just to you instead,
>but apparently you don't care for email :P

I'm bad at answering it, and my mailbox is full a lot. :(

Plus, whenever possible I think it's good for everyone to see this kind of discussion and learn from it -- whether you agree with my assessment or not, maybe I've raised some points you didn't consider.

>>Tac Hands/Exotics Fire Giant Outlander: Couldn't take the
>>Executioner while unwanted without at least 1 rest. Mostly
>it
>>just wasn't even a possibility... I'd have put this one
>high
>>on my list for killing a non-casting mob, but I didn't prep
>>much (at all) with him.
>
>Not a great tank; more the kind of character that wins PKs
>because he does so much damage the other guy runs out of hit
>points first. It's hard for that kind of style to stand up to
>guardian HP.

See.. I was thinking exotics with the hour legacy would make him a very good tank... Especially when I later fought Abernyte's? fire giant exotic user who tanked Nefla better then anyone (I caught him AFK once, and still almost lost). Obviously I overestimate the defensive portion of hour.

>>Juol: Tac2 Hands/Swords Fire Giant Outlander: Same as tac,
>>possibly worse, hard to say since this character was ruined
>>before he spent much time at hero.
>
>I think this character probably could've done it once up to
>speed.

I have bitterness here. I'm leaving it alone.

>>Nefla: Pre-barrier/regen changes I could take down the
>>Executioner pretty handily through prep + regen + shifting
>>between cobra and tiger, and post she was still a viable
>>raider and explorer, but mostly because cobra regen and
>>because the cheetah had better defenses than the lion.
>
>Yeah, that's about what I'd expect -- tiger is a good tank for
>an offense form, but that's not saying much. It'd need a lot
>of healing to do it solo in one go, and cobra provides that
>nicely.

Yea, but the regen changes hurt :(

>>Fordun: Goodie dwarf tribbie, flails and maces,
>sanc/healing
>>pendant + gates + pretty heavy prep usage. I couldn't raid
>>Outlander for #### with him. I *assumed* I would have
>enough
>>DR/Healing to take on the spirit, but that wasn't true, and
>it
>>tore me up the few times I tried it without a bunch of help.
>
>I think this character'd be able to do it with some of the
>right tactical choices. Picking the right weapons to wield
>for the Spirit would be one of the biggest. It shouldn't be
>too hard to find a couple maces that'd work pretty well and
>rock out the drum.
>
>Note, I'd expect maledictions to just not go his way once in a
>while and have him be forced to retreat, but I think you
>should be able to do it in one go let's say 80% of the time.

I tried to keep some wood/non-metal weapons on me for the Spirit, but frankly, even with divine saves, I lost the malediction battle more times then not... He was probably the worst tanking character I've ever played, and then I see very similar builds in battle or whatever tanking much better. I guess weapon practice would have helped a lot with him, but I suck at it.

>>(Name I can't remember): Empire dagger mace arial, balance
>of
>>sisters and striking (didn't get to striking). She was very
>>useful in PK, but the maran inner's divine retribution
>>destroyed me the few times I went in with Hunsobo... She
>was
>>very useful in PK, but I didn't really expect much in the
>mob
>>fighting/exploring area.
>
>Yeah, dagger is another one of those 'sort of a good tank
>against PCs because they run out of hp first' kinds of things
>that doesn't really stand up well enough to a guardian. Your
>legacies also are purely PK focused and not particularly
>useful for fighting mobs.
>
>(Not that there's anything wrong with building a character
>that way, just, you know what you're getting.)

I wasn't expecting much in guardian/mob fighting, but I also wasn't expecting the complete beat down that divine retribution dished out to this character. Some of that could have been saves and low level, but I'm thinking it's more how divine ret is set up (which I don't fully udnerstand) and how this characters pk's went.

>>Noellia: Wood-elf Bard, Nexus. I could pretty much stand
>at
>>the big D all day and not have to worry about him killing
>me,
>>but then I wasn't really doing a lot of damage that way
>>either... She was a very mixed bag as far as exploring
>goes,
>>high defense, but low offense output. She did alright, but
>>work killed her before I had a chance to hero and really get
>>out there exploring like I intended.
>
>I think this character'd be able to do most of the guardians
>given enough time, but you're right in that there's not a lot
>of pure damage coming out of a bard and she'd probably shine
>more in a group vs. group kind of raid. There are angles you
>could work here to put out the damage faster, but in general
>raiding solo with a bard is sloooow. It still generally can
>be done in one go if you save your mana for healing and just
>beat it down hand to hand, but...
>
>Bards look a little better vs. the cabals with multiple
>lower-hp guardians (Nexus, Empire).
>
>>I thought about putting this in an email just to you
>instead,
>>but apparently you don't care for email :P
>
>I'm bad at answering it, and my mailbox is full a lot. :(
>
>Plus, whenever possible I think it's good for everyone to see
>this kind of discussion and learn from it -- whether you agree
>with my assessment or not, maybe I've raised some points you
>didn't consider.

I agree... Mind sharing what kinds of character you tend to play that have good success vs. guardians? It seems to me that other than something with a large amount of innate healing ability, you're really going to struggle vs inners, but then what do I know?

>See.. I was thinking exotics with the hour legacy would make
>him a very good tank... Especially when I later fought
>Abernyte's? fire giant exotic user who tanked Nefla better
>then anyone (I caught him AFK once, and still almost lost).
>Obviously I overestimate the defensive portion of hour.

I think to a degree Hour Past based warriors go in the same bin as dagger warriors -- due to a combination of their offensive and defensive strengths, they're pretty good PK tanks, but not really on the class to tank down a mob with thousands of hit points.

I'm not 100% sure how the trade off of giant (and weapon resist) vs. an Hour Past build with a race with some dexterity shakes out. I think they're pretty even up for a lot of things, but maybe not raiding so much once you look at everything.

>I tried to keep some wood/non-metal weapons on me for the
>Spirit, but frankly, even with divine saves, I lost the
>malediction battle more times then not... He was probably the
>worst tanking character I've ever played, and then I see very
>similar builds in battle or whatever tanking much better. I
>guess weapon practice would have helped a lot with him, but I
>suck at it.

Probably if you'd kept going with him, those skills would've gotten to the point where the tide turned just from playing. I'd assume your spec weapon skills would be at 100% just from levelling up? Not too much else that's relevant there...

>I wasn't expecting much in guardian/mob fighting, but I also
>wasn't expecting the complete beat down that divine
>retribution dished out to this character. Some of that could
>have been saves and low level, but I'm thinking it's more how
>divine ret is set up (which I don't fully udnerstand) and how
>this characters pk's went.

Lots of good PKs hurt there. The balancing factor is that usually the players that are racking up a lot of PKs are also the players that have the assorted knowledge to manage a paladin with that spell or the Watcher, but not always.

Maybe not. I'm starting to realize that there's not as much correlation as I'd thought between who the best PvP players are and who the best PvM players are. To give another example, I've seen some of the best PKer paladins die and die and get allies killed like crazy trying to get Defiance, and I've seen terrible PKer paladins repeatedly solo-get (and quickly lose) it without incident. Different kind of thought process and planning, I suppose!

>I agree... Mind sharing what kinds of character you tend to
>play that have good success vs. guardians? It seems to me
>that other than something with a large amount of innate
>healing ability, you're really going to struggle vs inners,
>but then what do I know?

Healing ability can do it, as you allude to -- I've never had a ton of problem with any guardian as any of the communing classes. (I grant you, it's long ass boring solo raiding with a healer unless your solo includes some NPC help.)

Better tanking warriors tend not to have too much problem, depending a bit on the guardian. For Empire or Tribunal how well you tank is of immense importance; for something like Scion or Nexus or Outlander, not quite as much.

I pretty much always struggle with thieves and rangers, except in the odd case of rangers raiding Outlander. Usually I need two runs unless I want to really press my luck, and that's even with stupid good gear.

Assassin I haven't personally struggled with, although really some of the assassins I've played would, just due to the way they were built/geared/etc. -- but those were also assassins that didn't really want to solo raid, so...

Bard I've never had a problem with a cabal.

Orcs I haven't gotten into hero range since Bully came in, which would change that dynamic considerably. Before that, raiding was kind of a beating for them, now I think it could be doable.

Shifter I haven't had big problems with, but a lot of that is foci choice and form draw. Certainly I've had shifters that with different forms would PK more effectively but raid worse. I've seen people make it work with forms I don't think I could, though, so probably they know something I don't.

Transmuter, like bard, is largely doable but sloooow. Invokers I never have problems with (once upon a time, the limiting factor for invokers for me was not hit points but enough mana to get the job done in one go...). Necromancer's easy and fast, *if* you've got an army built up and are prepared to lose some of it or have it beat to hell vs. some guardians. (Without an army, it plays sort of like bard -- you're going to get it done, but damned if that's not going to be a long, slow fight as you whittle it down, healing yourself at need as you go.) Conjurer I struggle with a bit because I tend to gear/conjure/build in a way that suits PK better than raiding. A-P can struggle to raid a bit early in life, but once they hit their stride really nothing else competes for raiding speed/ease.

Did I leave anything out? Were you looking for more information there anywhere?

>>I tried to keep some wood/non-metal weapons on me for the
>>Spirit, but frankly, even with divine saves, I lost the
>>malediction battle more times then not... He was probably
>the
>>worst tanking character I've ever played, and then I see
>very
>>similar builds in battle or whatever tanking much better. I
>>guess weapon practice would have helped a lot with him, but
>I
>>suck at it.
>
>Probably if you'd kept going with him, those skills would've
>gotten to the point where the tide turned just from playing.
>I'd assume your spec weapon skills would be at 100% just from
>levelling up? Not too much else that's relevant there...

Well my defenses and hth skill with both ass (75-80 percent, maybe 90% parry). Spec skills were perfected or close, yes, but I tanked like a brick, and even with sanc/shield/stone skin consistently got ass beat by everyone mobs and pcs... Just wasn't my style of character I guess.

>>I wasn't expecting much in guardian/mob fighting, but I also
>>wasn't expecting the complete beat down that divine
>>retribution dished out to this character. Some of that
>could
>>have been saves and low level, but I'm thinking it's more
>how
>>divine ret is set up (which I don't fully udnerstand) and
>how
>>this characters pk's went.
>
>Lots of good PKs hurt there. The balancing factor is that
>usually the players that are racking up a lot of PKs are also
>the players that have the assorted knowledge to manage a
>paladin with that spell or the Watcher, but not always.

Thought so, and, apparently not... I can prep a little, but I'm not exactly a pill popping fiend... On the other hand, I was very successful at pk through all levels with that character (at least for me). Not that I racked up 100's of kills, certainly dozens over the maybe 200 hours I played her.

>Maybe not. I'm starting to realize that there's not as much
>correlation as I'd thought between who the best PvP players
>are and who the best PvM players are. To give another
>example, I've seen some of the best PKer paladins die and die
>and get allies killed like crazy trying to get Defiance, and
>I've seen terrible PKer paladins repeatedly solo-get (and
>quickly lose) it without incident. Different kind of thought
>process and planning, I suppose!

I'd say this is most definitely true in my case as I can't PvM for anything, but I'm at least decent in PvP. Part of the reason I don't explore is probably that I'll come up against a mob that takes out 90% of my Hp in a few rounds and I just can't seem to see a way that the damage I'm doing will let me kill it without spending hours at it.

>Did I leave anything out? Were you looking for more
>information there anywhere?

No, that's a good run down, but it seems like, especially with invoker/transmuter you are presuming that you'll always have access to barrier etc, where I'd say most players can't make that same assumption. I've not played a high level invoker/transmuter but I've seen some with roughly my level of prep/gear knowledge try and raid and get wrecked even with another person to stand in front.

p.s. I've also been curious about raiding w/ Orcs post bully, but haven't had the time/masochistic tendency yet to roll a serious orc.

>No, that's a good run down, but it seems like, especially with
>invoker/transmuter you are presuming that you'll always have
>access to barrier etc, where I'd say most players can't make
>that same assumption.

Yes and no... your strategy changes as you have less DR to do it, and admittedly it's generally harder/slower as you have less DR. Both of those classes have a solid amount of class-based DR available at the higher levels, but if I'm going to try to solo-raid a cabal with one of them, there's probably going to need to be at least a little extra DR in play to make it worth the effort in most cases. That invoker doesn't need 5 shields + stone skin + protection + aura + barrier + shield + haste to make it work, but a couple of those probably need to be in play to do it reasonably fast.

I had an invoker at one point with the best barrier source usable that I knew how to get as something that he could concievably get alone, although it was a major undertaking vaguely on the scale of Ktaar vs. the Watcher -- something I'd only really do alone if I was on without opposition and there just wasn't much going on. For that guy I skimped on barrier for a lot (not all, obviously) of his PvP fights, but not for the occasional attempted solo raid of one of the cabals that was hard for him.

The interesting thing is that, in PK, super DR is somewhat counterproductive; if your warrior is hitting my invoker for scratches, odds are you're not going to kill me, but equally, odds are you're running for the hills almost immediately and I'm not going to kill you, either. PvM, more DR is almost always just better, although there you're balancing how badly you want to kill that mob against the time it takes to assemble those preps / healing items / whatever.

But I concur that hour past midnight did very little for me defensively. I noticed a larger difference when using two exotic weapons, both defensively and offensively, though. This isn't a legacy I'd ever take again, though.

Yeah, I don't think I'd personally pick it unless I planned to fight with paired exotics. I won't go so far as to say that the typical Hour/Balance build is fool's gold, but I'd probably do something else with that legacy in most cases.

YMMV!

AP. Even without a super big unholy, you will have lots of damage output and redux via abs.

Shifter with big damage output and regen will do well. Depends on the inner ofcourse.

Invoker will tool most inners, due to redux and high damage output.

Warriors will do well, depending on the inner. Not without preps. Watcher will be a big problem for warriors since stone skin/protection will get dispelled frequently.

The last character I played was Ktaar, an imperial felar assassin. And I needed precisely 48 hours to kill the Fortress inner. The reason being I could not do it without burning two martial trances. Tanking wasn't the problem. The problem was that the Fortress inner would consistently dispel my protections and lay out UNSPEAKS with divine retributions - and the only thing I had (if I didn't want to expend an equal amount of time digging up non-dispellable DR to burn on a cabal mob) was trance.

Other guardians without dispel I could do in roughly 24-30 hours using the Orb of Twilight unless I got unlucky with maledicts. Which is still a lot of time.

What was I missing? It was incredibly humiliating, and you make it sound easy.

Even killing the outer is a challenge with most ranger builds unless you're prepping a lot because none of them are in wilderness (aside from huntress of course). I never managed an inner without a couple of retreats to heal up even with preps.

But then I suck, I admit it. I'm just out for the fun whenever I play :P

An elf bard was the only build I've had recent years that could solo raid fairly easily.

If it makes you feel any better, I usually need a couple runs with a ranger too -- and it's only ever as 'easy' as it is because I generally don't die at all playing that class, so I at least have a ridiculously high* damroll etc. to beat on the guardian with.


*Definition of ridiculously high = much higher than my other melee characters can generally maintain.

Yeah, I did that, too. I had an extremely hard time running a cloud ranger up against the Imperial inners. It almost wasn't worth it and you feel really exposed.

Against the Executioner, unopposed, I could do it with a period of sleeping to full. Opposed.. would be very dangerous. I kind of chuckle when I see a ranger run in there against opposition.

Completely agreed, and I have to say... while I think cloud ranger is still all-around great, damned if it isn't probably the worst choice for fighting the guardians it's likely to fight.

Something like a felar or human ranger tends to do a lot better, in my experience. Wilderness familiarity tricks you into thinking a cloud ranger is dodgy when in the unwilderness case they really aren't.

Fort's a rough one if you've murdered a huge boatload of good-aligned characters and don't have much in the way of DR built into your character. I typically lack the attention span to hold onto a character that long. :) Ktaar probably would've had an easier time as a new hero, oddly.

Beyond that... I've played a number of similarly built characters that didn't struggle with guardians as much as you seemed to, so I'm curious:

1) What kind of strategy did you take in terms of how you were geared? What about weapons? For a felar assassin, I'd fight an awful lot of PKs with a one-handed sword, but I might well switch up to staff or spear to fight an inner unopposed, wanting that extra tanking over the backfist damage. Even though the tanking isn't exactly the problem, any damage you save is less damage bind wounds needs to keep fixing and more of the direct damage it can eat into. I'd have to try it both ways again to see if that still holds up.

2) What about to actually fight the guardians?

3) Would using some non-dispellable DR have been a workable option? For example, let's say dispellable protection is easy for you to get. Might it have been worth your time to use it and reapply it after each successful dispel?

Now that I'm on the topic and remembering certain raids. There was this one funny/embarassing raid where Ktaar and an elite shadow went up against a solo Fortress healer at the Watcher. After, I don't know, 50 hours or more of fruitless head on fighting, I decided to just assassinate the healer and get him out of the way. And then the humiliation started... because Ktaar and the elite imperial shadow could not take down the Watcher before the healer unghosted and started healing it up again. At that point my free time had ended and I called off the raid. :P I expected a demotion at any time.

Clearly I need a PvM tutorial.

I'm not alone, though! :) There were plenty of times I watched a group of ragers (literally a group, and many of them competent players like Golhyr or Brinkmun) spend 50 hours or more taking down the Nexus inners.

>Beyond that... I've played a number of similarly built
>characters that didn't struggle with guardians as much as you
>seemed to, so I'm curious:
>
>1) What kind of strategy did you take in terms of how you
>were geared? What about weapons? For a felar assassin, I'd
>fight an awful lot of PKs with a one-handed sword, but I might
>well switch up to staff or spear to fight an inner unopposed,
>wanting that extra tanking over the backfist damage. Even
>though the tanking isn't exactly the problem, any damage you
>save is less damage bind wounds needs to keep fixing and more
>of the direct damage it can eat into. I'd have to try it both
>ways again to see if that still holds up.
>


Admittedly, I always used a one handed weapon and shield or just the one handed weapon. Never a staff/spear. For players, I figured the shield would work better for defense when laying on important maledicts. For mobs, the backfist damage like you said because I didn't see the melee damage as a factor. I guess there's a sliding scale of balancing offense and defense when fighting mobs.


>2) What about to actually fight the guardians?
>


Same. Would it really have dramatically shortened the time given the spells were causing the critical damage?


>3) Would using some non-dispellable DR have been a workable
>option? For example, let's say dispellable protection is easy
>for you to get. Might it have been worth your time to use it
>and reapply it after each successful dispel?
>


Yeah, I could count on unlimited protection against the Fortress. It would be suicide for me to take on the Watcher without it. And I could count on stoneskin against the Archmage/Spirit - it would be frustrating to take them without it, especially after the Archmage softens.

So the takeaway is.. bite the bullet and use DR preps, and balance out defense/offense?

>>2) What about to actually fight the guardians?
>>
>Same. Would it really have dramatically shortened the time
>given the spells were causing the critical damage?

Sorry, there I was getting at: how were you fighting the Watcher? E.g. spamming double spin kick the whole time, or?

>So the takeaway is.. bite the bullet and use DR preps, and
>balance out defense/offense?

That might be some of it, yeah. And really, I'm not totally sure spear/claws would've worked better than sword/claws for something like the Watcher -- that'd be one of those things where you'd probably have to try it both ways and see.

Some other ideas...

1) For any mob that's going to take you a while to kill, retarding its natural healing is probably worth your time. Since it's going to be a long fight, your crippling skills in general may be a little helpful.


2) Similarly, anything that helps you heal faster is probably worth your time. The Orb of the Twilight Lords was a good idea there. Maybe edges that help you heal faster are worth your time. Maybe a couple healing pills/potions are all you need to tip a hard raid to being done in one go. For some characters, leaving to hit a town healer may not be the worst idea, even if you have to kill the outer twice. (Yes, that's not doing it in one pass, but we're talking more generally, right?)


3) Keeping with 2) to some degree but going a step farther: You may want to wear some different gear for raids. Maybe a character like that can really use something like a pair of hammer pendants that they only bring out for things like raids. Maybe you keep around a piece or two of heavy -save armor to swap in for raids if you're not normally wearing a lot (and I might not as an assassinatey assassin) or otherwise get your saves up to eat into some of the direct damage spells a bit. Maybe in some cases you keep around a piece of gear that gives you a particular resistance that's handy for a raid you need to do a lot. (Note: I'm not suggesting anyone do all of these things and have a whole separate set of gear for cabal raiding. Theoretically you should have some sense of where the greatest gain for the least effort/burden can be found for your character -- if not, experiment!)

>Sorry, there I was getting at: how were you fighting the
>Watcher? E.g. spamming double spin kick the whole time, or?
>


I'd wear the pitch black shield and maledict (kot/kan, poison (either smoke or weapon), maybe blindness to stop him from disarming), then remove the shield and go at it spamming rising phoenix kick a lot. It seemed to do more damage over the long run than double spin kick. I'd also bleed him with the jagged sword. (It sounds weird talking about having this gear as a matter of course, but it wasn't hard to get and keep it as an assassin). I also had a low regen item (the ring). Reapply protection as needed. After a few rounds I'd flee and rest with the Orb.

I dunno. It'd literally take me the span of two trances :P I mean maybe rising phoenix kick isn't the best mob killing skill to spam after the maledicts.




>3) Keeping with 2) to some degree but going a step farther:
>You may want to wear some different gear for raids. Maybe a
>character like that can really use something like a pair of
>hammer pendants that they only bring out for things like
>raids. Maybe you keep around a piece or two of heavy -save
>armor to swap in for raids if you're not normally wearing a
>lot (and I might not as an assassinatey assassin) or otherwise
>get your saves up to eat into some of the direct damage spells
>a bit. Maybe in some cases you keep around a piece of gear
>that gives you a particular resistance that's handy for a raid
>you need to do a lot. (Note: I'm not suggesting anyone do
>all of these things and have a whole separate set of gear for
>cabal raiding. Theoretically you should have some sense of
>where the greatest gain for the least effort/burden can be
>found for your character -- if not, experiment!)


Yeah, this seems like common knowledge, but it's actually pretty helpful. Hunsobo tore through guardians in one go, and he was carting around unlimited stoneskin/watershield and two healing pendants and the ring of regeneration. I'll keep "solo raiding gear" in mind for my next character.

Like you said above, on some levels it's a question of time investment between raiding time vs. regathering preps time.

Anyway, thanks.

Have you tried solo'ing your nexus guardian as a rager without considerable rest? It's pretty much impossible as the Nexus guardians compared to the rest of the guardians are like the Patriots compared to the rest of the NFL.

Point is the inner would be a serious bitch to kill, pumping lethal stuff, like the nexus inners, when there was no one able to defend (ghosts count). But if there are defenders, the defenders are supposed to defend, and the inner does not pump out big damage, just tactical skills to help defenders. And ofcourse mid levels do not have a cake walk, since they will be facing defenders, or optionally beefcake inner. And it would be harder for mid levels (since they do not pump out the same damage as heros) but still feasible given more time.

I admit these changes are not entirely geared for making raiding better for lowbies, but also to make rading cooler in general.

First, I'd like to plug my post on the Santa Zulg forum regarding making cabalwars more interesting. This idea is just an extension of that.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=58&topic_id=12

Problem: Lowbies are useless in cabalwars.

Reason: They can't kill the guardians that hold the items.

Solution: Make more items. Voltron had five lions and Captain Planet's teenage posse had five rings, so why not have five "items" per cabal? Adding to that further, why not have three (or even four) of those items be usable by any cabal?

I should add, and the imms are probably aware, one of the aforementioned CF spinoffs implemented such a system, although in their case all "items of power" were generalized. It was just a question of how many each cabal had at any one time.

I think the idea can be taken further by having these generalized items being a subset of the "cabal items" group, which would still include the unique items we have today. In addition, these generalized items should be able to be transfered by pking cabal members - and anybody should be able to do it.

So I kill level 18 rager X, perform some ritual over his corpse, and receive *special item* as a result. This would obviously be modified so that multikilling wouldn't yield more of these items (if the cabal had more to give). Also, you might even throw a bone to the pkilled by having the ritual destroy his corpse and return the eq a la areas explore.

The poseession of these generic cabal items would equate with the levels of cabal powers I discussed in the Santa Zulg post.

Now as for where and how these items might pop up, I'm open to suggestion.

Thoughts? We need to give lowbies something to do in cabal wars. If they can help out the team by pking members of other cabals, that would be a great start. In addition, it plays into the rp elements that I was suggesting in the other post. A lowbie imperial is happy to let lowbie tribs live because hey, we're all orderly here. What if the imperial could gank down a lowbie trib and pull an item of power (admittedly less power than the Scales, but hey, it's something) from the corpse of the trib? Alliances suddenly mean a lot more, and roles become much more important.

Glad that you're thinking about this, Nep. I think a big change to the system could really make things more interesting for players of all levels. And as an even more interesting side-effect, could allow further decentralization of cabal wars (read: more cabals) without diluting the fun.

T

They have something to do in cabalwars. This 'something' is PK. cabalwars are not mob killing. its all about PK.

lowbies can do this we well. the only exclusion is when you are raided and no elder around to retrieve, so...you just be like you would be uncaballed!

so this (unability to kill outer) is certainly not something, that prevents lowbies to join cabal pre-20.

and I think it is something interesting in your idea. I'd rather see imms working on cabalwars improvement, which will bring fun to most part of CF players for the whole their 'career', than making some features to some one class, which will bring fun only to those, who playing it and just for first-second time of playing.

One working little subgame could be outposts that would initially start as neutral, belonging to a local settlement. The cabals could then conquer these outposts and thus gain influence to the land. Uncaballed people could get quests from the city leaders to conquer the nearby outpost back to the city. The outposts would have a hpwise somewhat buff inner, which would be different for different cabals and cities(Udgaard could have a jaette commander or captain, Maran could have a Tara'bal, Empire centurion, Outlander a nature spirit and the outpost would become wilderness etc.). The outpost inners/outers could be tough enough to hold for a while(and be replaced by a winner's outpost inner on next popup after a conquer), but not too hard for lowbie members to beat.

Mainly it would be about glory and getting these little area spots to conquer and places for cabals to fight over.

The idea that your character's (level 10 and up) can do something small to help the Cabal of their choice is kind of cool. Fort youngsters going to kill a mob and bringing his evil weapon back to be destroyed, outlander going and speaking with a spy living in Galadon and bringing back his report, tribunal going to the new one heart camp and fighting the refuge there, etc. Gives the impression of actually helping in the war.

Bringing a player into a Cabal as an apprentice is also cool. It can give a newbie a much bigger understanding of what the Cabal is all about. Maybe give the Mortal leaders the ability to see what quests the apprentice has completed for their Cabal. But also be able to give the player the ability to end the apprenticeship and move to a different Cabal. Maybe cap that out at level 15. At level 15 you can have another step like Boon's idea. With full membership starting at level 20. The RP possibilities at the younger levels will be alot more indepth I think.

As far as titling apprectices, I don't think that could work. Especially if you allow them to leave and move to a different Cabal before level 15. I can understand Empire (You are pledging your Oath to them for all the world to see) and Battle (They are Zealots against magic), but the others don't really make as much sense.

I think there'd have to be incentive for people to *want* to be that spy, or forward scout, or whatever. And that would likely require giving these apprentices some small ability, or perk, that goes in line with the cabal's goals and ideas.

Here's what I came up with:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=19760&mesg_id=19772&page=

>Over the years there's been a trend to push cabals more and
>more to being a high level thing, which I consider a mistake.

I was thinking about this recently, and wondering why things have evolved this way, too. I think the answers to your questions below may be more easily found by addressing the "why" issues.

1. More frequent deletions. Nowadays, a semi-vet will delete a level 13 warrior who dies unexpectedly, even if they recover all eq, just because they lost 1/3 of a con point. Conjurers delete at 17(!) if they don't get the familiar they want. And so on.

2. It's just plain easier to level up/practice skills/etc. when you are uncaballed. I didn't even APPLY to Fortress with Fobrin until I was like level 44, though I always intended to (and I did have discussions with various Fort members, including Soayel, beforehand). I don't know if I could have put up with raid/retrieve/defend ad nauseum while trying to perfect Gel.

3. "What can you do for me?" syndrome. Less as Hunsobo and Fobrin (Imperial, wanting bloodoaths of course, and good-aligned char), but in general when I'm leading a cabal (and I assume others are this way) I'm thinking "Ok dude you're level 18 and applying to my cabal. You can't retrieve for me, you can't defend if I take the item, you really bring nothing to the table. Come see me in 7 levels. Plus, then I know I won't waste a half hour having an induction interview with you, only to see you delete when you die at level 19 two hours from now."


So looking at these problems, what might the solutions be to your questions below?


>So:
>
>1) How can we make cabals more accessable to new players,
>without diluting their nature or reducing the appeal of being
>caballed? For example, if we let everyone pick their cabal
>and instantly join in the academy, cabals would be a ton more
>accessable, but I'm not sure that'd be worth the price.

The only way I can think of is to defeat point number 3 above, and that's probably only going to be accomplished in one of two ways: 1) Hard-code an upper limit to when you can join a cabal (thereby forcing mortal leaders to talk to that level 20 guy instead of waiting for him to reach level 30), or 2) smacking mortal leaders into making more time for the level 20 guys.

>2) How can we create more value to lower level members in
>cabals? The olllld raiding system did a great job of this,
>even if the new raiding system is far superior in every other
>way.

Beyond making them accessible to new players, I think giving incentive for veteran players to join lower is a key thing to look at. That incentive will also work as a benefit to new players - if Battle (for instance) has 3 or 4 vet players at level 15-20ish, that one new player who chooses Battle at that level has instant (knowledgable) groupmates.

To do this we have to combat both 1) and 2) from above. If I can level up my Storm Paladin w/o applying to Fortress, then join when I'm a hero, with no ill effects, why not?

Maybe we offer some sort of semi-neat (albeit somewhat minor) cabal skill/perk (or a chooseable edge?) for each cabal that is only available if you've been a member of the cabal since level X (20?)

Example: If you're a Squire from level 20 on, your mantle of the phoenix always defends you from fire (it doesn't HEAL you like a Maran's does, it just makes you immune/resistant to heat).

Example 2: If you've been an Imperial (including a bloodoath) since level 15, once you are level 30 you no longer have to answer the sect hall questions to enter.

Ok so that makes some reasonable headway on encouraging joining pre-20th. But what about raid/retrieve/defend? The only thing I can think of, for that, is some form of hard-coded "You can't go into an enemy cabal if you are lower than level X." type deal. And I'm not sure I want to go down that road.

(Part of me really wants to bring back the level 20 max that we had in Master, but then I remember all the complaints from level 20 mages who wanted to go out and level but couldn't because the mortal leader hadn't logged in for two (TWO!!!) days.)

Players of classes that are prone to be weaker at low levels - shifters, invokers, conjurers often avoid applying to cabals until they hit a "power-range". This way, they avoid dying in defenses & retrievals where the odds are heavily stacked against them. For example, invokers often don't apply to a cabal until after they have all their shields at 38.

I think caution is the key word there, which is sort of interesting.

There's no question in my mind that even shifter/invoker/conjurer can rack up kills much faster at 20 than at 50. Anyone who thinks otherwise is, sorry, just wrong. The catch is that you also rack up deaths a lot faster, and maybe that's the part that's hard to take.

How about across the board giving cabal players or even all players another death or two before they lose a constitution point? Makes room for a lot more mistakes and learning.

I doubt the amount of people who con-die before they delete would decrease by much.

>2. It's just plain easier to level up/practice skills/etc.
>when you are uncaballed.

This is one of the big sticking points for me as a player, and I'm not sure how to change the culture to allow it.

Back when I started playing, what with giant XP holes and no form of distention or heart exploding, you always knew that there were people in the midlevels of your cabal that just would not ever level again. That's the way it was and everyone was used to it.

Now when you're caballed, there's an immense pressure to level, and this above all things puts me off. I don't really care about the raiding and retrieving -- that's fun for me. It's when I've got someone else in the cabal trying to tell me I'm some kind of traitor to the cabal because in non-raid times I'd rather go explore an area or mess around with a skill I've never played with or fight some enemies of the cabal than go kill arial prisoners with their dumb ass that I'm thinking, maybe I'll just stay uncaballed longer next time.

Nuke distention and bring back the old XP holes... Not every character can/should become a hero, and the old system did a good job of keep those people down. On the other hand... I don't think I could handle trying to rank up with those ungodly xp holes again... But you'd definitely have a lot more mid-low ranked people in cabals again.

Yeah, I don't think that's really the solution, unfortunately. I'm probably about the only person who feels like levelling is too easy/automatic now.

One of these days I'll have to do a character that absolutely never gets a group and tries to get XP. I figure that character will still hero in under 200 hours if I don't try to slow him down.

Granted, if XP holes were like they were back in the day, I'd probably never hero a character, but such is life. The thing is now that every character has a reasonable expectation that they not only can hero, but that they will hero. So now, when you induct someone, you aren't looking at what their character is, but rather what they will be at hero. Since cabal leaders are usually (almost always) hero's, they want the help in their range. So they push, because if they push, even the rankest of clueless newbies can reach hero now.

Also, no small part is the push that imms give to people who don't rank. Bad titles, etc. etc. have been the norm for those people who choose not to rank.

>Also, no small part is the push that imms give to people who
>don't rank. Bad titles, etc. etc. have been the norm for
>those people who choose not to rank.

Eh. I draw a mental line between 'not in a hurry to level' and 'willing to mobdeath suicide for hundreds of hours to stay the same level.'

Granted, some imms have historically been bigger about pushing it than I am. That's because I'm right and they were wrong. :)

Last 2 chars I did were mostly like that. I think I had groups for a grand total of 5 levels in each char. And these were characters with fairly significant XP costs.


To get back to the earlier question, I wonder if re-instating (or re-upping) the time penalty/benefit would help? I seem to recall that there was at one time a significant XP penalty based on the speed with which you were leveling (i.e. a level 30 at 20 hours would earn significantly less XP for a mob than a level 30 at 60 hours). That might encourage folks to effectively slow down and engage in other activities rather than spam level.

This might encourage more participation in cabals at lower levels because you couldn't as easily speed rank to hero to get involved. It also might encourage fewer early rage-deletions because you'd have more invested in the character in terms of time and cabal commitment.

I've often thought that cabal outers and other cabal mobs (special guards, centurions in particular because they are not used just in pk) should be reassessed depending on the PC striking them. What I mean is that Hero level centurions or special guards should not mean instant death for lowbies trying to fight the system while still being a challenge for the heroes fighting them. I'm guessing this would be pretty complicated to code but I've always thought the idea would be cool. Then lowbies would have more incentive to raid to recover items and cabals would have incentive to have lowbies to defend such raids.


But maybe that's just me.

>
>To get back to the earlier question, I wonder if re-instating
>(or re-upping) the time penalty/benefit would help? I seem to
>recall that there was at one time a significant XP penalty
>based on the speed with which you were leveling (i.e. a level
>30 at 20 hours would earn significantly less XP for a mob than
>a level 30 at 60 hours). That might encourage folks to
>effectively slow down and engage in other activities rather
>than spam level.

I don't think CF has ever had this, FYI. It definitely hasn't since I've been able to see the code.

I seem to recall at one time Rahvyn thought the ideal rate for leveling was to average 4hours per level and had XP geared toward that rate but I must've been hallucinating.

Regardless, I know it would annoy the crap out of the speed levelers among us if you put in such a system but it might effectively result in more low level activity.

Of course it might also encourage fewer folks to play too, which would be a bad thing.

Maybe we just need a culture shift among the Immortals to aggressively reward lowbies more for RP and PK rather than focusing on the heroes. T

>I seem to recall at one time Rahvyn thought the ideal rate
>for leveling was to average 4hours per level and had XP geared
>toward that rate but I must've been hallucinating.

That probably would've been before my time as an imm, so, it's possible you're not hallucinating.

Maybe we just need a culture shift among the Immortals to aggressively reward lowbies more for RP and PK rather than focusing on the heroes. T

There, I put it in there again for you :P

nt

Just my $0.02

I was AMAZED at how easy it was to level when I came back. I've gotten a ranger since then from level 1 to 51 in 4 days. The MOST fun place for me to level is Calandaryl cause it's dangerous as hell and you get major points for trying it.

Also I had a 500k xp hole as Quesnel and because I EARNED that 500k xp hole I learned a LOT about nooks and crannies which allowed me to win that easter egg contest which then got my XP hole erased... I'm so glad that -20% is the cap now... oh man....

But to comment, I REALLY liked yours and Twists comments on this. So far I think I like the idea of Twists to have pre-20 induction = X power bonus the best, but that REALLY sucks for conjurers and mages having to suffer through the insta-death low levels. But I also think that move regeneration rates should be doubled so staying low level is a little more viable and less annoying. Then you can have effects like energy drain which cut mvs in half but ALSO nil regeneration rates too.

I also like the idea of slowing down the ranking. I think race to 20 or 25 is fine, but after that you should be capped at 4 or 5 levels a day. If you're going to do that though without race to 20 you need to give conjurers something to do like conjure booze elemental and give shifters something to have fun with too. Invokers I don't think would be bothered by this scenario at all.

We have not so many caballed people now for constant fun. Splitting them on different ranks where they can not PK wont make things better.

Well to solve the retrieval issue have "bricks" available at each Cabal.

Bricks are only available to... not sure the upper level limit... lower level characters within the Cabal. Bricks are HUGE soaks for damage that follow a Cabal character, for a price of course, around and auto-engage a Cabal's outer(except the Cabal they originate in of course). They soak up amazing amounts of damage and do for all purposes none in return. Bricks could heal relatively fast so that with several low level characters there is a slight chance of retrieval by making several assaults. Only one brick per Cabal may exist at any one time.

Unfortunately Bricks are not in the lowbies group. Are not rescuable though will flee when the one who bought them flees. And are attackable by all. And I do mean ALL! So while you can have a brick, and use it in someone else's glass house, by having one you make yourself a rather prominent target. Bricks should not be immune to summon either.

Cabal: Brick
Scion : nightwalker hatchling
Fortress: juvenile phoenix
Imperial: lesser titan
Tribunal: golem
Outlander: greater sloth
Village: elder giant
Nexus: simularicum

At a certain level you can no longer hire such beings since they are beneath you. Heck if you wanted to you could have their effectiveness be inversely related to the level of the purchaser.

That sort of solves the issue of retrieval duties. You can at least attempt it without having to worry about being quickly ganked by the outer and having your newb breads stolen by the Fortress.

I think many of your ideas are right on... and I remember the damn level 20 restriction... was kinda annoying but having that said, I played leaders of the village when we were weak and helped to make it strong and when I was doing this I was enforcing some strict guidlines.

I in a sense was doing something like you were but as a mortal... having people who want to be part of the village speaking to people who are within, or reading what they can about us. I didn't care as much about their rank if they could show their will and knowledge that was enough. As for the cap on induction.... personally if they didn't start early it is almost a question of do they really want this or not...? I was making sure if an applicant spoke to me that they really wanted to be of the village because the process involved more in depth rp, as well as knowledge and fighting. If they asked me I would imediatly ask someone within the village to speak to them if they didn't have the recs and that for an veteran is kinda remedial but is great interaction for newer ones.

Personally in my interviews depending on who they had recs from I would have a quick, or a long interview. If they have recs from say a vet or captain or general or someone I had a long interview with, I would speed up the induc but all that is kinda leader responsibility in my mind.

For me when I induct, I remember that feeling of acomplishment of the first time.... and I remember the first char I ever got inducted was by Thror and him threatening to kick my ass if I messed up. That was great.

It can't be done for all cabals but if the person is a leader they should expect not just hey... I get more powers and leader con... but yeah I am responsible for this cabal if they are strong so am I. Sure with the way I did things it pissed people off but it also eliminated that oh I died and I am gonna delete mentality because you earned your induction and you now knew some of the people in the cabal and they knew you even without the village applicant title. *which I do like the idea of but if they get such a big bullseye on their heads I would like them to be able to counter raid too, just my opinion though*

I would like to see some kind of xpad or something for those who are going above and beyond to help interact with people, teaching them what needs to be done like in on of the posts above... I remember when I first got xpad for my role, or right after a good fight, I was like oh yeah.... thats cool and I still enjoy it. This would be nice for those mid and higher rank chars already in the cabal and help get lower ones into the cabal scene. kinda like an indoc.

I also like your ideas about small boost to powers for younger players as at times its nice to get that feeling of yeah I am doin good.

I think there are two balancing themes here -

the leaders induct higher to save their time essentially, and so induct the players that can bring the most to the cabal.

as a player, it's much easier to rank up uncaballed.

I agree though, that being caballed is a huge draw for new players, and I think everyone benefits if there are more lower players in cabals. (Like someone else said: the point of cabals is the PK! the little guys don't need to be able to raid.)

So, to echo something else someone posted - tiered systems are very convenient for encouraging mass low level inductions, giving some motivation to the player of that char, and then letting the cream rise to the top.

Conveniently, most cabal powers are also already tiered, by level.

Maybe you could leverage the partial empowerment code into a partial induction scheme.

i.e., every player can induct to the first level of powers, or promote up to the tier below them, with tiered limits hard coded.

So, that would take some heat off of cabal leaders (much like traditional corporate/organizational systems), give little guys a chance to get in the door and then prove themselves, and more options on how to incorporate a cabal into your rp. Intra-cabal politics give extra opportunities for rp to come through.

The incentive to join lower is the same as Oathing early: the sooner you start climbing the chain, the sooner you get to the top, and get the nifty powers. If that's not enough, give caballed chars a 10% boost to xp rates, (or to learning rates), and cabals will be packed.

On a more basic level: make the system reward the behavior you desire!

Can't you just give mortal leaders some guidance.

e.g.

To induct newbs but be willing to uninduct if they don't seem to be learning from whatever their base level is (but warn them that this could be in store),

or

To actively give guidance to people before induction, so that even a newb can get inducted. (I prefer this route; it worked for my first characters.)

I don't think you need some kind of crazy Cabal revamp to fix this. I think it's a cultural thing. I completely agree with you Nep that joining a cabal was definately what got me hooked on this game. I think there needs to be a culture shift back to the days of the teens being the main induction levels, not 30's+. If the Imms push to influence the culture on this it will change quickly and for the better.

Also I liked the idea of cabal quests for younger members. Things like destroying magic items for battle, putting items in the vault for nexus, etc. More repeatable quests with cool rewards for young members would help make them feel like they are making a difference.

Village and Empire wannabees become applicants on 15-25 ranks generally
Tribs wannabe are often join the cabal on 18-26 as I see.

Mage's life on lowbies is hard enough to make it even harder joining cabal these ranks. But other classes do as I know.

fddsf

Pure and simple, bring back the PK lists for the assorted level groups: 11-20, 21-30, etc. The PK list always inspired people to work harder throughout all the levels. Now people just aspire to have a total kill count at the end of their character's life, when the PBF is published. It seems to me you're more effective at PK when you have all of the class abilities, as opposed to limiting yourself with half or less than half of your given class abilities.

You can, but it never sticks. For example, a year ago Team Nexus Imm was inducting people in the teens and pushing the leaders this way... a year later and I doubt anyone that low is in.

Sort of like how Twist and I used to have to sit down the Master leaders every year or two and tell them what the Five Magics were, because a year of the telephone game made them completely unrecognizable from where they started.

If that's what the solution is, that's what it is. I was just hoping for something that would push the culture that way more permanently.

>Sort of like how Twist and I used to have to sit down the
>Master leaders every year or two and tell them what the Five
>Magics were, because a year of the telephone game made them
>completely unrecognizable from where they started.
Eh? Sounds interesting. Can you tell me about what and how was "distorted"?

The Masters of the Five Magics was originally taken from a Megadeth song (Five Magics).

Lyrics here: http://www.songfacts.com/lyrics.php?findsong=6524

The important part (for us, that is):

Give me alchemy, give me sorcery
Give me wizardry, thermatology
Electricity, master all of these
Magic if you please, bring him to his knees


So the Five Magics were originally Alchemy, Sorcery, Wizardry, Thermatology, and Electricity. I didn't even know this when I was the (second or third?) mortal leader of Master. I had to ask Rahvin post-imming.

Over the years, with thousands of apps, and huge amounts of serial Master players, leaders needed new questions. Just asking what the Five Magics were was sufficient to start with, but they started embellishing. "Give me an example of Alchemy." "What sort of spell might Thermatology be useful for?" and so on.

Let's take a theoretical timeline: Nepenthe makes Jim the Necro the mortal leader of Master. We go over a few guidelines with Jim, and send him on his merry way. Jim lasts for 4 months as leader. One of his inductees, Bob the Invoker, helps Jim interview apps and such. Eventually, Jim deletes. We make Bob the mortal leader. Now Bob learned everything about induction and such from Jim, but he's got his own twist (no pun intended) to it. He's been interviewing apps left and right even beforehand, and each app throws something new his way, and over time his questions (and the answers he expects) drift away from center. Bob inducts Frank, who months later becomes mortal leader, and inducts Sue, who months later becomes mortal leader, and eventually the Five Magics are Alchemy, Sorcery, Wizardry, Electricity, and Thaumaturgy (instead of Thermatogy). And Thaumaturgy, as opposed to being used for a fireball spell, has somehow become the magic of healing.

That's just one example (that is fairly close to something that happened). Imagine how things got screwy when we just sorta "changed" what the Five Magics are/were (Transmutation, Invocation, Conjuration, Necromancy, and um...something else - I can't remember what the fifth one was. I'm getting old.).

can bring certain examples of 'distorted' questions?

would like to see how it evolved

>can bring certain examples of 'distorted' questions?
>
>would like to see how it evolved


Well, to use my example above, I believe the reason Thermatology got switched to Thaumaturgy was that some applicant named off the five but said Thaumaturgy. When they got told they were wrong, they were sorta like "are you sure? Thaumaturgy means healing, which comes from heat. Perhaps Thermatology is just a more literal translation of it." or something like that. That leader (or the next one, or maybe that applicant, when he became leader, or whatever) sorta took that and ran with it, asking applicants about thermatology vs. thaumaturgy. And so on, until it was just NAMED thaumaturgy (and people who said thermatology were sorta scoffed at. "Thermatology? Sounds like a made up word to me.")

And here I had been telling everyone the Five Magics were Coffee, Beer, Tequila and burritos :P

(after the tequila I lost count, what can I say)

But maybe that's because I was in charge of the Barons and not Masters :)

At least, you were the mortal leader of Master that handed it off to me. :P

Did you know at the time what the Five Magics were?

(It used to be a GREAT question to ask applicants, because they'd try to associate it with Scourge of the Violet Spider. "Um, poison, weaken, blind, fireball, and...um...I don't know?")

I'll be honest, I don't remember whether I knew what they were or not. I'm guessing that I had to have been told when first leaderized but it's been so long and so many brain cells ago that I couldn't swear to it. I did manage to get a couple of others into Master's after Truck had disappeared and you were in charge, so I must've known some of the right answers. :)

I think one of the great things about overseeing the Barons of Entropy is that there was no 'set' interview process when I was watching them. Sometimes it'd be ridiculously complicated, other times it'd be as simple as saying 'I think it'd be fun to be a Baron'.

That and it was always fun to walk around vis as an Imm and have everyone see 'Trouble has arrived.' I had that as my poofin for a while.

My favorite poofin of yours was "You're in Trouble now."

Well, just like you now get a message when inducted, you could have a helpfile and prompt people to read it when they get leaderized. You could even, if you wanted, make it cabal specific.

This post instantly made me think of Thanksgiving dinner. Why, Mek, you crazy bastard, would you think such a thing? I'll tell you why. If you go to a Thanksgiving dinner where there are at least a dozen or so more adults (usually 20+ for my family), and a whole friggin flock of little kids, do they sit and/or play together much? Well, the adults look after the kids and keep them in line when necessary, but the kids pretty much run their own little show - complete with a mini table, little chairs, and assorted inflatable pieces of furniture to emulate their up-and-coming adult lives.

What if the same type of stratification were applied to cabals? What if the cabals had one main HQ (the ones that exist now), and at least one other mini-HQ where the adults aren't allowed to play. What if the Fortress of Light, after all these centuries, decided to set up a forward observation post in hostile territory. A post manned by its younger, less experienced members? These members could have lower-level abilities attached to an item that, if taken, would be held at their enemy's mini-HQ as well? Hell, you can just add on to cabal areas that already exist. Instead of a forward observation post, you could have guard towers placed at the entrance of the Fortress approach route.

Anyhow, I could rant on that forever...it's fun.

At some point these people would have to graduate to the "big" cabal, because we can't be having level 35+'s pwning the mini-HQ system.

This is just one idea. I will try to think of something else.

nt

Personally, I don't really care for a "mini-cabal-hq" type system. When it comes right down to it, lower level guys are still going to have to defend/retrieve the big guy items, and now you're adding another item to the mix. Bleh.

But that's just my opinion.

1) As many of others have said, allow earlier introduction through a staged process like the "Village Applicant". Every cabal can set different requirements, including powers for the base. Just as an example, an Scion applicant could summon a nightwalker (it is a level 15 or 20 spell anyways right?). You could also have this kind of thing handled by 51 Immortals.

2) There's also the flip side to creating more value to have lower level members....how about more incentive for lower level people to join cabals by having things like bonuses to kill each other? I'm just talking small bonus learning for killing another applicant to another cabal or raiding or even grouping with other cabal members (orc style). Of course it would follow the normal rules of "don't multikill the newbie", but it would promote raiding with the higher ranked cabal members with a benefit to the player. You could also make the outer fight better by having different strengths depending on who is fighting it....easier over all but special abilities based on it's opponent.

For raiding, lowbies (15-25) are good for being lookouts only. Depending on my build, some inners give my heroes trouble. In some situations, retrieving is impossible for lowbies because of cabal powers like hero-level centurions or to a much lesser extent bioempathy. I don't know how these can be changed without significantly changing cabal powers.

For new players, having Bloodoathed, Village Applicant, or (Wanted) in their title means a death sentence, if for no other reason than their enemies will now how to find them. These title changes are cool, but dangerous.

I don't like to cabal early because it is difficult ranking up while doing the grunt work of defending and retrieving from the young imperials. I think a small ranking bonus for being cabaled cumulative with normal exp bonuses for alignment might help. To improve interaction among experienced and inexperienced members, if a character above your pk range accompanies your ranking group, your learning rates are slightly increased.

My next suggestion is going to sound bass-ackwards compared to the way things are normally done: instead of giving edge points for pks, give edge points for dying in pk. This would serve three purposes: it would help out the people who need the help, it would take some of the sting out of dying and regearing as a newb, and it would make people less inclined to level up to 35, pk to distension, rinse and repeat. A related idea would be to make a special category for these death edge points so that they go toward only cabal edges, demonstrating their willingness to die for their cause.

Create lowbie skills accessible at level 15. They shouldn't be pk oriented, but they should have some cabal and rp related function like
- (all) tend guardian: provide minor curative powers to guardians who are not fighting, specifically to halve the effects of maladictions like poison, plague, and bleeding.
- (Empire) dicing: Young oaths can attempt to gamble with any imperial or city guard in an attempt to win the coin carried by the bored guard.
- (Outlander) disguise: A little mud, a change of hairstyle, and a character's wanted status is masked from non-alert guards. One's appearance isn't hidden from PCs or special guards, but the 20 sentries and watchmen on the merchant road in Balator are too busy dicing to notice you.
- (Fortress) improved request: Because of their renowned purity, young squires and acolytes can request with less ceremony (shorter duration) and heightened effect (+1 to +3 levels).
- (Tribunal) DunkinDonuts: Because of their service to the city, members of the Blood Tribunal can purchase things at a lower level (+1 to +5 levels) than non-mercenaries.
- (Nexus) study: By studying a magical object prior to giving it to the couriers, a young Nexan can gain slightly increased observational experience.
- (Villagers) hut: young villagers may use materials found within the ruins of Ostalagiath to erect a temporary shelter for improved healing rates.

>To improve interaction among experienced and
>inexperienced members, if a character above your pk range
>accompanies your ranking group, your learning rates are
>slightly increased.

I don't see this as necessary. If I have a hero character helping my level 20 group, that's its own reward -- I can potentially go to areas that would otherwise be too dangerous, have the support of that character in what we're doing, etc. Basically, unless the higher out of group character is completely incompetent, I'm going to already get XP a lot faster.

I think successful cabals have interaction between established and younger members, so let's turn this around and give the older character improved learning rates instead.

As the older cabalmate stands to gain less from the interaction than the younger, let him learn skills at the same rate as the lowest ranked character in the group.

>So:
>
>1) How can we make cabals more accessable to new players,
>without diluting their nature or reducing the appeal of being
>caballed? For example, if we let everyone pick their cabal
>and instantly join in the academy, cabals would be a ton more
>accessable, but I'm not sure that'd be worth the price.


I think having each player have to choose a cabal by level 15, including none, can help Immortals and the players with character development. It would be important to note that Scion, and Imperial are advanced Cabals requiring some game knowledge to function within. This way you can monitor how well a person is doing with respect to developing towards entrance to a cabal.

In fact adding a new thing to score: Cabal Reputaton with a rating of 0 to 100%. This would let a player gauge how well they are doing. You can have a few auto things involved in it and of course any Imm watching can simply bump it up or down as deemed appropriate. Feedback is essential to players being able to understand what is required of them. Even a simple value like CR would help. In fact having Cabal members able to give them a value would help as well. Soon as a player makes it known his character seeks the Cabal any interactions can help.

This way a player working their arse off towards getting into a Cabal can be noticed. I hate to say it but Hero level characters do not give a rats ass(rump) about lower level characters 99.99% of the time so trying to get some notice by them is annoying, frustrating, and futile.

Add several Cabal related quests granted by the outer guardian to those who have chosen the Cabal in question. Make them representative of what will be required of them.

>2) How can we create more value to lower level members in
>cabals? The olllld raiding system did a great job of this,
>even if the new raiding system is far superior in every other
>way.

Cabals are already quite valuable. Especially the newbie friendly ones: Herald, Tribunal, Fortress and to some extent Battle & Outlander. You get experienced players helping you out. You get access to gear you would never get otherwise, access to basic resources. A healer.

One thing I would put in a Cabal is a sparring partner/trainer for skill development. Each Cabal should have one and a source of practice weapons. Also secondary quests that are Cabal related would really help. Get players to explore their new Cabal and again learn more about duties and the like.

This concept puts more workload on an already overworked CF staff. I'd prefer that they spend their time making thief edges, more shifter updates, and other miscellaneous projects, rather than spending it on policing someone's cabal reputation. Just my preference though :-)

I definitely like Boon's take on things thus far.

Having cabal related quests given by the outer guardian could be interesting for future projects, too.



Instead of having a "cabal reputation," I wish more people would take the time and effort to send up simple prays or send cabal specific notes or whatnot, as just a good cookie. Even if it's just a one-liner. It gets the person recognized for being cool and giving props to another character, plus it gives the character getting the props even more props for doing the right thing.

My initial thought was to have an apprenticeship program, for lack of a better term. At level 10 (which is the level you begin to receive cabal skills/powers), there should be a prompt given, much like that for spheres and descriptions and whatever else, that asks you if you want to become an apprentice to a particular cabal. This could work a lot like Bloodoath status. It'd give you a title, allow you to hear cabal tells and cabal raids, let you know when you've lost an item or regained an item. However, you couldn't talk on the cabal channel, or fully retrieve a cabal item, and you wouldn't have any cabal powers.

The idea would be similar to being a village applicant, except without gaining any powers. The title would give people in your group/pk range an idea of who you are and what you're seeking. Plus, having that title makes it so you are scrutinized by the other players more. For instance, if you're an Outlander seeker and you have a temporary title that reflect that, and people see you picking up gold coins, selling green emeralds to the jeweler, and buying potions of return, then they obviously know you aren't following your role. And players tend to make the difference. Maybe another applicant saw this and might make mention of it to the cabal leader? I think it'd police itself.

Plus, members of those particular cabals could see lowbies who are interested in joining the same cabal. They could spark up roleplay easier. They could call upon them to defend against other lowbies easier (instead of checking note list, and searching through 100 notes).

This would be a one time decision. If you don't make the decision at level 10, and you level up to 11, then the opportunity to become an "apprentice" will be gone, and you'll have to follow the current routine for joining a cabal.

As a side note, it'd also sort of force people to flesh out their character concept by making this decision early in life, instead of just being faceless warrior until level 25 or 30, or whatever class you're playing.

Thoughts?

I like this idea; although, I'd prefer to have three levels:

RITUAL: A player could sign up for apprenticeship automatically, at the Academy or somewhere prominent in major hometowns. Some sort of "recruiter" NPC.

1) Apprenticeship: a period of indoctrination, not judgement. At this point an applicant may act inappropriately -- even switch cabals willy nilly -- but with rebuke, not rejection. This gives an RP outlet for those characters or players who want to express doubt or capriciousness without losing the game. At this point, the cabal is courting the applicant, not the other way around. It is the responsibility of the full cabal members to convince the applicant to live their lives a certain way.

RITUAL: Between apprenticeship and parole, the would-be cabal member pledges his loyalty to the cabal.

2) Parole: a period of judgement, in which the would-be member is tested and judged. Potentially some limited powers, mainly to test the applicant's use of them. Applicants would be roughly disciplined for inappropriate actions, and possibly booted for the worst improprieties.

RITUAL: Between parole and full membership, there would be the usual cabal interview, after which the successful member gives a formal oath of some kind.

3) Full membership with gradually increasing powers. Same as usual.

RITUAL: Leadership interviews. Some sort of public ceremony for newly appointed leaders. Not an oath or pledge this time, but a public speech.

nt

But I gotta admit I hate the idea of having cabal lowbies tagged(titled) for simple tactical purpose. The idea isn't bad in itself, but perhaps have it be a tag or title only viewable by other applicants or members of said cabal.

****This would be a one time decision. If you don't make the decision at level 10, and you level up to 11, then the opportunity to become an "apprentice" will be gone, and you'll have to follow the current routine for joining a cabal.****

Apprenticing is definitely something I'd want to partake in I think, but with the only options given in this post it would force me from a player/character standpoint to take the long route in joining whichever cabal I was going for.

The strictness of only being able to choose a level ten is a little overboard. But I think the decision should be made between 10-15. Otherwise, why even have an apprenticeship-like setting?

As for titles, I think some should be tagged specifically. But maybe not Outlander or Scion. But I could definitely see tagging Fortressites, Ragers, Heralds, Tribbies and Imperials. These are supposed to be proud positions. You don't want people eschewing their duty, do you? More often than not, these types of people are going to make their views well noted anyway.

I like this idea. I think to keep the boredom from setting in too early, you could perhaps offer some sort of low level powers to those that choose to align themselves with a faction. Nothing too powerful, and more likely utility in nature. Something like allowing Trib apps to be able to distinguish between yells and yelling wildly, Nexuns being able to feel balance shifts, Battle retaining what they have, Imperials could be able to have a scout channel or something (possibly with a timer on it), Outties being able to distinguish between things that are home in the wilds, Forties being able to detect evil, etc.

I'd also like to see some sort of quest based progression, so that if you don't really have times that match up to leaders, it would show your dedication to their cause. Perhaps have a handful of tasks that one must complete (random like the happy boots perhaps, but meeting certain level requirements) and once you have them completed then perhaps your title changes from apprentice or whatever to dedicant or something along those lines. Perhaps something like going from an Oath to a Citizen in the Empire. This would then allow leaders and imms to see who is ready to make the next step and would alleviate some of the tells leaders tend to receive.

Just my humble two cents.

Some possible skill ideas for the apprentices:

Battle: detect magic
Outlander: weakened version of pathfinding
Fortress:
* Squire: detect evil
* Scribe: first aid
Nexus: sense fluctuations in balance (like detect magic does)
Tribunal: detect chaotic
Herald: improved compare (to carry on the theme of being adventurers)
Empire: improved haggle (so they save more coins for donations)

These skills would give newer players wanting to try out the cabal what the basic (very basic) goal of the cabal is.

I would rather see some change to boring raid/reraid system

Its just war without results, which lasts ages. Empire can be strong like hell but it can not conquer a small village - Balator.

Tribunal can gather billion of coins but they can not just put an enforced guardsmen post at the gates, which wont let criminals in and which will shout via cb that they are attacked.

Thats just boring system. Bring fun to it. And sorry to disappoint you, Daevryn, but I met cabals/clans in every MUD I've played. Not many of course, but still. CF has nothing really different.

Another popular MUD has good feature at least: if you raid others you get some small but nice bonus, like -5 to svs and such. That makes things more funny.

Many newbies wont go in cabals. And I dont seek they needed to be there.

>Thats just boring system. Bring fun to it. And sorry to
>disappoint you, Daevryn, but I met cabals/clans in every MUD
>I've played. Not many of course, but still. CF has nothing
>really different.

The other games I've seen either:

1) Have them, but each one isn't really unique, or

2) Have them, and the game traces its lineage back to CF in some way. E.g. the founders of the game were all playing CF immediately before starting their game.

"Guilds" were a standard feature in LP-MUDs, the first of which predates CF slightly. (The only other MUD I played considerably was Genesis, the first LP MUD). As a result, the lion's share of LP MUDs have guilds.

The major difference was while guilds gave you powers, they were the ONLY source of your powers, as LP MUDS traditionally are a classless system. You had three tiers of guilds though - racial, layman, and occupational, and it was the occupational guild that gave you most of your RP ideology and friends the way our cabal system does.

Guilds were raidable, but there was no power loss. Raiding would just disable your shops, trainers, access to different parts of your guildhall, etc, and most raids were NPC driven with scripted events.

Anyways, just some trivia. It was not necessarily any better or worse than CF, but different. Yet it had the same effect of keeping its players engaged socially in the game way more than just a typical hack-n-slash MUD.

One way Genesis got its players engaged early was the racial and layman guild systems, which did not have level restrictions and many of which were automated. I don't think CF should necessarily reflect that exactly, but the idea that was brought up with an apprenticeship or something that is an automated first stepping stone into cabal life, is a good idea.

Especially now that we have more RP restrictions on a prospective cabal member. I mean back 10 years ago, not only could you become a knight at level 11, but you could be neutral or be friends with spastic anti-paladins. No one cared of the Entropy member has a million gold in their bank account, and everyone was a lot more loosey-goosey about what was "magic" to a battlerager. I'm glad the bar has been raised, but giving the lower level characters access to more tools and relationships to facilitate their more stringent RP would be a good idea. Like the Village applicant status, an excellent idea. Even forgetting powers, giving applicants access to special shopkeepers, etc, or an aspiring Outlander a wilderness recall from the go, could be helpful.

>
>Another popular MUD has good feature at least: if you raid
>others you get some small but nice bonus, like -5 to svs and
>such. That makes things more funny.

Just because you don't see something, don't assume there isn't something there. :) And that foes for retrieving and losing.

>
>>
>>Another popular MUD has good feature at least: if you raid
>>others you get some small but nice bonus, like -5 to svs and
>>such. That makes things more funny.
>
>Just because you don't see something, don't assume there isn't
>something there. :) And that foes for retrieving and losing.

What do you mean? Are there some unique bonuses when you raided except morale boost?

I'd say the fact that if you have your cabal item or retrieve it, you get some nifty cabal powers that are unique to Carrion Fields. Plus, if you take your enemies cabal item away, you take away their unique cabal powers, too. And that's very important when you're a Nexan trying to kill headless ragers.

Continuing the apprenticeship line of thought... I'd like to say, that when I joined the Marine Corps, I didn't go and talk to the Commandant of the Marine Corps to sign up. I went and talked to a Staff Sergeant recruiter. When I was getting promotions, it always came from the commanding officer.

Why should I have to talk to the village Commander to become an applicant? Or why should I have to talk to the Captain of the Fortress to become a paige? I'm pretty sure these decisions could be left to the person wanting to become such, and some sort of automated mob. Or simply by choice, via original idea.

In some respects I dislike that so much of the game is, how you say, scripted. In other words, you're more or less forced to plan your char at level 51 from the time you're level 1. I don't like that. You basically need to plot out your religion, sphere, cabal and etc before you even get to spend 10 hours playing the character. I think its bad for the game, as a whole, to force people into those molds.

I wind up getting stuck with one "plan" for a char (because you don't want to be seen as a flip-flopper or what have you) and then if things don't work out the character is now useless since I can't "change gears".

In real life, people don't plan that far ahead and I think its better for roleplay to not be forced to pre-script your entire life.