>Now, about Hell. I kinda feel like Hell is a lot like Silent,
>and has no place in CF anymore. It literally almost asks the
>players to "cheat" in order to explore/figure it out.

Hell requires skill, Silent Tower requires knowledge.

You could be given a full walk through the Inferno and there's not jack you could do about it. Just as you said, it asks players to "cheat" in order to accomplish it given the difficulty, design problems and player base size. Big part of why it's interesting is no matter if you figure out, actually doing it is the hard and fun part.

You could be given a full walk through of the Silent Tower and suddenly become a solo badass. If you share that knowledge with others, they immediately gain the benefits...and it required sharing of knowledge to even try archmages. Big part of why it was closed is because once you figure out the "riddle", you get the prize - people who had never done it were walking out with Inferno-grade or better gear.

Knowledge should never equal balance, ever. Maybe that works in a single player game but not in a multiplayer game.

And really the dragon lairs aren't hard - the blue is a pain in the ass for some reasons (like buggy dragon tracking) but the rest are easy. A group of us got together and cleared all the lairs out in under two hours. Tiamat is rough but if ya get that kinda group, with people who have the knowledge and experience for the fight, you might as well go to the Inferno. Half the reason Tiamat hasn't been beaten yet is the exact same reason higher archdevils haven't - getting the numbers of the right classes is too unlikely. Having enough invoker/bards to keep shields up for example is basically impossible unless the stars align perfectly or people make missing classes to fill in the gaps at hero range. Not many people like making the bitch healer, especially an evil one.

That and the Inferno is just cooler ;)