Tue May 22 09:12:29 2007

At 8 o'clock AM, Day of the Great Gods, 5th of the Month of the Great Evil
on the Theran calendar Punwick perished, never to return.

Race:	gnome
Class:	shapeshifter
Level:	48
Alignment:	Neutral
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	OUTLANDER, the Outlanders of Thar-Eris
Age:	161
Hours:	101

I didn't really like you :P Here I am a fellow shifter in the Herald walking into the forest and BAM attacked. Bastard :p Other than that I never heard a word from you even before when I asked if you wanted to go ranking.

I want some of these other characters get some dead time please.

I'm afflicted with this disease frequently. Is it catching?

I can't think of anything else to say. Good luck with the next.

Next time you delete and post a goodbye, just let it stick.

Instead of telling me that you really regretted doing it, didn't care if you couldn't find any barrier, really the role and wanted to try to play it again, etc... only to delete again two days later. Since you're complaining about barrier again now I can only assume you didn't mean any of that.

I was hopeful you'd turn things around and yet do fun things (for yourself and others) with this character; instead you pretty much just wasted five minutes of my time blowing smoke up my ass.

(Incidentally, the deaths of yours that I saw weren't anything that barrier would have helped you much if at all with. There's "I need a little more damage reduction to make this work" and then there's "What the hell are you even doing?")

I was thinking that it might be cool to have an ABS quest given by the guildmaster once you reach the appropriate level. That way each person, no matter how new, at least has SOME inkling where to look for his sleeks.

IE when a char reaches the appropriate rank and you go to your guildmaster.

Your guildmaster says 'Getting big, eh? I think it's well time you demonstrate your abilities to the guild.'

Your guildmaster says 'I've heard tale of a wand of great power, hidden somewhere in the tundra north of wherever/guarded by a sorcerer in a high tower somewhere etc etc.'

Your guildmaster says 'Find this wand, and perhaps we will see if you are ready to master the ancient magicks of XYZ...'

f

And how long before someone posts all of the quests to reveal all of the locations of all of the wands? No thanks. It's working exactly the way it should.

~

The status quo isn't perfect, and I've started to ponder ways to shake it up again. Although, doing that only ever makes a few people happy and pisses a lot of people off, no matter how good of a change could be made.

That being said, characters I've seen try to find more wand locations in character in a RPful way have generally been very successful. For every Gistle there's ten Punwicks.

Not one of my characters has ever found a sleek location that would pop for them, and I spent a damn long time looking. I got ripped on in my PBF comments as Spenner for not prepping, but to be honest I just couldn't bring myself to spend any more time trying to find the ####ing wands than I already had. I'm not saying I've never found a wand in my life, because thats just not true. I have what I consider a fair knowledge of wand locations, but I've not once found a sleek source for any of my characters (aside from the one place where anyone can get them if they know how, but that hardly counts).

Easter egg hunts were a blast when I was 7. I'd really rather just play the game than spend countless hours examining hundreds of thousands of keywords in thousands of rooms just to try and find the 3 that will give me some goodies.

Again, at the risk of starting an argument, you all changed things (like practicing) in order to encourage people to spend less time number crunching and more time actually playing. But the ABS system, as it is now, is just another numbers game that takes time away from interacting and playing the game. It's really no fun to have a huge checklist of places and containers and mobs and to go down the list saying "okay, it wasn't in the zombie bunnies sphincter, so thats 763456 locations down, and only 34705623 more places to check. Lets move on to the Great Undead Poodle Pile next". To be honest all it does is encourages people to hoarde their locations, and to swap them amongst a small group of like minded pals.

I think Enubergo's idea about getting at least a vague hint from your guildmaster about locations specific to your character is a great idea. It's not anywhere near like drawing a map for you and saying "here you go Timmy, you are a hero now so here's your sleek black and a lollipop", and it would make people less inclined to turn to OOC resources for finding wands.

I've not found more than one sleek with just three mage heros totalling maybe around 1000 hours (isn't that sick??).

Now, I have to interject on myself and say that with Nihkorzhebus I found some non-sleek a-b-s spots, both through exploration and maybe one or two through IC pals I either followed or offered hell blood for. Then I got monopoly on a couple wands which I had for like three months straight, literally (which is a different argument I guess). Not sleek wands, mind you.

But anyways...it took me seriously and literally two chars of ~250 hrs each and then ~400 hours w/ Nihk to find some wands and, but, when it rained it poured. My next mage (I have him started already) I crap you not I expect it to take almost as long. Is that bad? I like playing my characters out though, not all folks do.

Oh. My point then. Sleek-quest-type-guildmaster thing sounds hellariffically cool for older mages who have stuck it out and maybe or maybe not found their sleeks. Didn't Spenner get Shield as a spell? Stuff like that. Maybe take it a direction of rewarding long lasting/well RP-d characters for things like sleeks (or these "quests") rather than each yahoo who thinks he can rank his gnome-shifter to sleek range and check all his spots then delete when sleeks not be there. Make any sense?

Finding only one sleek in 1000 hours is nobody's fault but yours. I NEVER have issues finding my sleeks and it is from information I have built up on MY OWN over the years. I think the way it has been coded is probably one of the best solutions possible. At the end of the day, if you can't be bothered searching or are not searching smart enough, there are other IC avenues you can go down -> I need a lackey to satisfy my own personal ego.

And I am having no current complaints with how it is.

As I said, I've made do plenty with my OWN exploring and such.

I think my only point might be that playa's make the wands not wands makin' the playa's. Holla.

No worries LS. Keep on keepin' on. And I will too. Woot!?

Remove A/B/S wands and place those spells in PCs spell lists but with mana per tick requirements. These would need to be large, say 50+, and maybe linked to class and intelligence. I'm sure to have a minority opinion but it would solve this "problem." Oh, and while we're here: just remove all/most preps in general, especially those damn speckled pills.

How does making it a quest that is solvable by the newbist of newbs MAKE it more likely to be spread via OOC means?!

I'm sorry but I don't know what kind of purple crack your smoking. But thats not what would happen. The current situation >now< is why wands get spread around because finding ABS is freaking ridiculous sometimes.

I'm seriously intrested to know how this solution would cause it to be more likely to be spread via OOC channels vs its current mysterious and annoying state?

It's quite simple actually. You write a certain amount of quests. Eventually, in a very short period of time, all of the quests are known. Once they are all known, it is just a matter of time before everyone knows the locations causing the wands to be common. Certain wands are not meant to be common.

The way it is now, there are many different ways that wands can be found and not found. This makes folks want to keep the knowledge to themselves because no one truly knows how it works. The players who do the exploration reap the benefits. Not the guy who knows the quests and just runs around until he finds the one that will fit him.

>The way it is now, there are many different ways that wands
>can be found and not found. This makes folks want to keep the
>knowledge to themselves because no one truly knows how it
>works.

People love to show off the stuff they've found. If anything, I think people are *less* likely to share information that is more easily discovered.

The fact is that the sleek wands system rewards people for sharing information about it. A quest system would reward sharing less. With the sleek wands system, you can end up not being able to find your wands. If you had pooled your information with enough people, you would probably have been able to. If there's a quest, then sharing just makes it easier to do something you'd be able to do anyway. Furthermore, the very idea of nobody truly knowing how it works makes it all that much more appealing to share, because maybe you can complete your own puzzle. No such advantage lies with the quest.

> Certain wands are not meant to be common.

But this is the more important piece. I'm not arguing for the quests system particularly, but I don't think it's true that people are more likely to share info about it.

asdffffasdf

>>The way it is now, there are many different ways that wands
>>can be found and not found. This makes folks want to keep
>the
>>knowledge to themselves because no one truly knows how it
>>works.
>
>People love to show off the stuff they've found. If anything,
>I think people are *less* likely to share information that is
>more easily discovered.

Umm...no. Easily discovered stuff doesn't need to be shared because it is easy.

>The fact is that the sleek wands system rewards people for
>sharing information about it.

Umm...no. The sleek wands system doesn't care if you share the information so there is no real point in doing it. Which means it works.

>A quest system would reward
>sharing less. With the sleek wands system, you can end up not
>being able to find your wands. If you had pooled your
>information with enough people, you would probably have been
>able to. If there's a quest, then sharing just makes it easier
>to do something you'd be able to do anyway. Furthermore, the
>very idea of nobody truly knowing how it works makes it all
>that much more appealing to share, because maybe you can
>complete your own puzzle. No such advantage lies with the
>quest.

This is where you are missing the point. Even if we wrote 100 quests for wands (Never going to happen) it is still a finite amount of quests that will only take a matter of time before they are all known. What happens then? Then we need to mix it up again with 100 new quests? No. What if each player were to have his very own special quest at character generation for the wand that only he can get? Boring. The way it is now is meant to not care if you share the information without babysitting it. Do we care if the players share the information? Sure. Should the players care more if they share the information? Sure. Why should the players care more? Because they may find them or figure them out at some point and realize that it may not be there next time if the other player knows about it.

>> Certain wands are not meant to be common.
>
>But this is the more important piece. I'm not arguing for the
>quests system particularly, but I don't think it's true that
>people are more likely to share info about it.

If everything worthwhile was easy, there would be nothing worthwhile to do.

>This is where you are missing the point. Even if we wrote 100
>quests for wands (Never going to happen) it is still a finite
>amount of quests that will only take a matter of time before
>they are all known. What happens then? Then we need to mix
>it up again with 100 new quests? No. What if each player
>were to have his very own special quest at character
>generation for the wand that only he can get? Boring. The
>way it is now is meant to not care if you share the
>information without babysitting it. Do we care if the players
>share the information? Sure. Should the players care more if
>they share the information? Sure. Why should the players
>care more? Because they may find them or figure them out at
>some point and realize that it may not be there next time if
>the other player knows about it.

How is this any different from a finite number of locations, that all a person with OOC connections has to do is go down a checklist until they hit the right one? I still see this as only rewarding OOC information sharing, and handicapping honest players. At least with the other way, it would give the honest players more of a chance to find things on their own than they have now. The OOC information peddlers wouldn't have quite such a monopoly on ABS.

> Easily discovered stuff doesn't need to be shared
>because it is easy.
....
>Even if we wrote 100
>quests for wands (Never going to happen) it is still a finite
>amount of quests that will only take a matter of time before
>they are all known.

By all known, do you mean all shared, or all known by a single individual? If you mean shared, doesn't this contradict what you said about easy stuff not being shared because it's easy?

I do get this, but the sleek system also has a limited resource about which information can be shared advantageously.

>Umm...no. The sleek wands system doesn't care if you share
>the information so there is no real point in doing it. Which
>means it works.

Maybe I'm not understanding the sleek system well enough, but I'm pretty sure that if I told someone what I know, they would benefit. if I share with someone and they share with me, we've both benefitted.

>If everything worthwhile was easy, there would be nothing
>worthwhile to do.

I agree. Honestly, what I think would be good isn't a static quest to find a wand, but a quest system that complements the sleek system. I.E. a quest system that points you to the sleeks. Note that the reward of the quest is the pointing, not the sleek. E.g. you do something auto-generated (like kill something in an explore area) and then when you go back to your guildmaster he says "I've heard of a sleek black wand that is hidden in the crevice in mistress Exampleton's sewing room"

Then again, I really don't feel that the current mechanism is all that great, because it requires grinding with every character. My impression is that the staff disagrees here, so okay, but basically I think there's a difference between rewarding exploration, and forcing people to just mindlessly recheck their sleek locations list with every character until they find the right one. The latter is quite dull.

Even if you share information it works! you even said so! So why are people banned over sharing. Why is it so secret. If information = shared it still works!

"The sleek wands system doesn't care if you share the information so there is no real point in doing it. Which means it works."
--Lyristeon--

Umm...no. The sleek wands system doesn't care if you share the information so there is no real point in doing it. Which means it works.

How is this an accurate statement? I won't just spill the beans on stupid system but yes sharing does help, If I knew the last # however many spots I don't know I could always always always always always have barrier with every mage char untill you guys move something, And I'm pretty sure I'm not missing very many at all.

Explain to me, What in the hell I risk by sharing these locations besides you banning me *Incentive not to get caught as far as most are concerned if you ask me* I gain to have alot and risk little.
And don't give me that crap line that I risk my sleeks being out by more people knowing them.

As a footnote, I'm not saying that giving out quests to get ABS are the solution but saying that giving a quest out will cause the information to be shared more is well insulting.

>Umm...no. The sleek wands system doesn't care if you share
>the information so there is no real point in doing it. Which
>means it works.
>
>How is this an accurate statement? I won't just spill the
>beans on stupid system but yes sharing does help, If I knew
>the last # however many spots I don't know I could always
>always always always always have barrier with every mage char
>untill you guys move something, And I'm pretty sure I'm not
>missing very many at all.
>
>Explain to me, What in the hell I risk by sharing these
>locations besides you banning me *Incentive not to get caught
>as far as most are concerned if you ask me* I gain to have
>alot and risk little.
>And don't give me that crap line that I risk my sleeks being
>out by more people knowing them.
>
>As a footnote, I'm not saying that giving out quests to get
>ABS are the solution but saying that giving a quest out will
>cause the information to be shared more is well insulting.

You are missing the point. The sleek wand system works because what works for one guy, doesn't necessarily work for another. Yes, if everyone had a list of where they found such wands and it was being passed about, that would be lame, but, would probably hurt the guy who already knew about some for some of the time. That has been deterent enough. My point as far as not caring is that just because one guy knows where one is and may tell another guy where it is, it doesn't mean that guy will find it there. It's obviously not being passed around much because everyone is complaining about not having them. That just means it works. Everyone is under the assumption that all of the locations have been found. Maybe, maybe not. And no, I don't think everyone should just be able to go get a wand through some quest. Doesn't mean it won't happen, I just don't see it as being a plus.

I've used abs in the past but not with the new system in place. I've been offered a list, but turned it down. I thought just to offer it was lame and I've not spoken with that person again. Not into cheaters.

Anyway, I hate abs. I wish we would do away with them and let the players skill utilize the abilities given to the chosen race/guild instead. There is a large advantage to abs and, while things will never be fully balanced nor should be, I think they tip the scales far too much.

Out with abs I say!

From what I've found you can explore all day long and if you are lucky it happens that the one place you checked 10 times suddenly has the wand, of course this won't carry over to your next character so you have to explore for 200 hrs again. There needs to be some kind of placeholder, because right now the only people who have decent wand knowledge are the Imms, OOC groups like the russians, and people who have given up their personal lives for CF.

Yeah no ####, I found a sleek finally after checking the same place like 5 times at different points in my characters life. </3 sleek wands, they'd have actually made my character not a complete ####fest so everyone said "you need to prep!" kinda hard when you can't find the ####ing things.

>Yeah no ####, I found a sleek finally after checking the same
>place like 5 times at different points in my characters life.

I don't exactly want to call you a liar, but it's pretty much impossible for what you're saying here to have actually happened.

Someone came to their sleek spot(knowingly or not) and did not grab the wand. Verakh then came there one of those times when the above occured and was like, SLEEK! Only to be dissapointed and confused as to why he never again saw it.

CraftedDeception.

nt

I lost more than 1 point of con trying to get a sleek wand from a place I could never get one, just because I saw one there when I went with someone else.

nt

I had one sienna spot, I used constantly. But never found a sleek black so I was constantly on the look out for barrier.

On my way to one spot, I'd often check other spots randomly because I didn't know if there was a wand there or not.

After much of my time spent searching, sometime after I got my griffon and tatted, etc - another sienna spot starting popping for me. I then had 2 sienna spots I could harvest constantly - and at that point I pretty much kept aura/shield up permenantly.

I don't know if it's meant to work like that. But that spot only started working later in my life and then worked with 100% reliability.

Yhorian

I understand what you are saying, but I am sure there are wand lists floating around out there right now. People with "connections" get in on the good stuff consistently. A system where people are thrown some kind of bone, no matter who they are, would even things out.

You really don't think it would be cool for an automated, guild-specific mini-quest to be triggered for protective wands?

Hell, I could see it like this:

(These clues pertain to the sleek sets)

1st quest: The guildmaster gives you a specific direction to find a shield wand ("Go look under the streets of Chicago for your wand, etc etc").

2nd quest: "You'll find your aura wand in a place crawling with undead with whom holy warriors gather to fight." A little less specific.

3rd quest: "I once heard of a very potent protective wand in the eastern lands." (The specificity could be a "little" better than this.) This one is pretty damned vague.

I have played CF for 2-3 years now and my first two chars to hero was conjurers, I didn't even know that wands existed until the end of the life of the second one, when I found some in peoples corpses. After that I have kept my eyes open for wands, and what always strikes me when I find one sleek or other is that you find them in almost all areas high level as well as low level ones.

And another thing that strikes me reading this thread is since everyone is complaining about not finding wands I would say that the system is working quite well, and ooc lists of wands aren't that common. Otherwise noone would complain now would they? So it seems the system works and that the players stick to the Imms wishes and are not telling people ooc where to find wands.

So why fix something that isn't broken?

Ok, here's my take, and it doesn't agree with what the imms think about wands, but that said, I don't really have a massive problem with the current system, despite usually being without sleek blacks.

I do not agree that ooc groups cannot share the info. Essentially, I found out ic where my wand was, but exactly the same process could have been carried out ooc. The difference is, that people might not tell me ic, since they have no idea who I am in real life. However, where people do know who people are in real life, they could give me the same info I was given ic.

The advantage to the ooc group is that they can all share this info all the time. ic, I have to convince someone to share it with me.

That said, I really don't see a good solution to this issue. I quite like the suggestion of having a high mana cost per tick, but there are too many balance problems to overcome with that.

For example, you sleep someone and they'll be out of mana when they wake. So casters would lose casting, and communers would lose communing. Bards would lose singing. All because of being slept whilst having protections up.