As I near hero with yet another nameless character, I become depressed knowing that I'll probably get bored pretty quick at the hero ranks. My skills will become perfected because the last skill I'll have learned was in the early forties, my enemies will either be too numerous and always travel in packs, or conversely, too few to hunt, sets will be attained and lost, blah, blah, blah. Sure, for many, the hero ranks are glamorous. Yet, there is an ever-growing trend of people who delete under 150 hours, half that spent just getting to hero. Part of the mystique, fun and challenge of CF is achieving the pinnacle, but once you get there, its like all the greatest problems have been surmounted. I've been spending some time thinking about this, and here are some ideas to spice up the final level:

Hero skills based on class and time spent at hero. This could be a handful of minor improvements to a class' skill set, or new skills altogether. Could call it "Class mastery" or "Warrior Mastery" or whatever-have-you. Obviously, you wouldn't want super-duper unbeatable characters, but it would give a newer meaning to "Hero" that isn't solely based on equipment sets. This would also give motivation to those who level sit mid-40s for the bigger pk range to get trucking to hero ranks.

How it might work:

Just turning level 51, you get your class mastery skill. This could be as simple as a 1%-2% increase in all existing skills, or a 1%-2% decrease in mana cost for skills/powers/spells, or something like that. Nothing hugely powerful, but subtle and useful.

After 20 hours spent at hero, you discover insights into greater class mastery. This is where it would get more diverse. For a warrior, all your weapon skills jump 10%, up to and included 100% (thus making the need for endless weapons practice less urgent), for rangers, their entangle ability would cut movement by 3/4 instead of 1/2, for a thief, you pick up another thief skill at random (only what would be currently offered by a guildmaster at its current tree path i.e. detect traps if nothing else has been learned), and so on.

From there, it could be added more stuff at 50 hours, 125 hours, and 250 hours spent just at hero.

I would love to hear opinions on this from everyone, whether good or bad. Thanks for a great game, everyone.