Hi,

I'v been thinking about Nepenthe's message about the staff burnout and also about player's frustration caused by various issues.

It seems that they are quite connected:

- people's frustration by the game leads to people becoming frustrated by IMMs and angry, and they tend to spit this anger onto other players and the IMMs. Unable to affect the situation, they start switching from CF to other games or just real-life
- the staff in turn doesn't get satisfaction and also gets all these negative emotions directed at them. This leads to IMMs unwilling to cooperate or just becoming burnout and leaving as well

This is a so common situation, I've been and am experiencing similar problems at work almost everyday, so I wanted to suggest to IMMs two things that are directed at helping restore the emotional health in the MUD.

1. Addressing important problems

Look around - players bring some issues again and again. Players get pissed of by some issues so much that they lose their temper and they would start a real fight if they knew who to punch. When it gets repeated again and again - that is the issue to address. It doesn't really mean it should be addressed the way they suggest - it is more like the balance in that area is screwed.

People like when someone pays attention to their problem - even if the solution is not exactly what they asked. People don't like to be ignored.

When you next time think about which issue to address, think about the one which has highest impact, not the one which is more interesting or challenging.

Take for example two recent changes:
- rangers - I havn't seen much of the requests for a change of such a magnitude. Sometimes rangers can be boring - but it is unlikely that it could cause anyone to get completely pissed off
- shapeshifters - many people asked for it, many people were frustrated being unable to roleplay adequatly in form, especially since it is so unexpectedly attractive to do so. It doesn't address the concerns of all people - but it also stimulates the role-playing part of community.

I know that it is hard to keep the staff motivated in improving CF if they do what is necessary rather than what they want. Try seeking appreciation by implementing what players want and that may be the motivation that you are looking for.

Also remember that different things affect the balance differently. For example, what may have the most impact - ten new areas or a few new skills?

According to some theories, new areas would only affect Explorers, Achievers (to some extent), and Socializers and Killers (to a very litle extent). Depending on the skills, they may have significant effect on either group. Which ones to choose? The current and recent population may tell you. Which group is the most unsatisfied currently? What kinds of players left CF recently and why? What kinds of players RAGE-DELETED recently?

This is just one way the examples of classifying and deciding what is most important, I am sure you know many other approaches. Use them constantly and let people know the reason why you decided to shift the balance.

2. Collaboration

People like to be heard. If you agreed to the first point, you'd need to hear. It is impossible to guess what is good for players without giving them a way to speak up. Forums are a good start, but by themselves it is like a hammer without a blacksmith - you need to listen to what people say. Do it manually or use some scanning tools - you'll get a list of issues.

Notice that in some cases, while it may be useful to collaborate on solution, but it spoils people's surprise. But even if you just consider people's opinion on what is a problem, you'll receive honest appreciation of players.

When making decisions about which issues is important, it is useful to use polls. You won't spoil things much if you talk about a painful issue such as ganging, full-looting, ABS, multi-killing and such. (Don't consider this list as my top-10 choice, it is just an illustration).

Besides simple polling, you can use anonymous or registered voting. For example, there are schemes where people get a limited number of votes which forces them to vote only on critical things. Keep the log of polls/voting and don't make them expire - some things change priority with time, and public availability of statistics allows people to see why a particular decision was made.

But the important thing is to communicate. Please don't make the similar mistake as I demonstrated a few paragraphs above when I classified "rangers" and "shapeshifters" - the issue of such a magnitude can't be a one person's opinion and can't be based on just "I havn't seen much of the requests". The same applies to players - what do we know about the reasons for the actions of other players of IMMs? Don't make hasty decisions and start hating everyone.

Finalising:

To IMMs: don't get me wrong. I don't suggest you to completely change the way you do your work. You do well already - you keep CF alive even for so many years which is just phenomenal! The suggestions above are not panacea - I hardly know what you actually do to be able to constructively suggest anything useful - but I just hope that you can consider these things amongst other things that you usually consider when you do what you do, if you don't do this already.

To players: be gentle. By striking someone, be that a player or an IMM, you destroy joy for them AND for you. How would you enjoy CF after you've made enemies everywhere? You get an immediate satisfaction, but what after that? It is not fun playing with enemies, with people that you hate. But you'd like to continue playing, wouldn't you? :)

Let's be just grateful to IMMs for keeping this endless source of fun alive, and let's assist each other in getting as much fun out of it as possible, both inside of the game and outside.

Thank you guys for keeping CF running!

I am wrapping up the discussion (from my side) as it leads away from the topic, and becomes personal/unconstructive. I've said all I wanted, and I've got some quite good replies.

Thanks everyone who gave the topic a thought.

I don't post often, but I feel this is an important post to address. Firstly, to use your tone, people often are more inclined to listen to what a person has to say if they know where that person is coming from, so here it is...I've played for almost nine years now. I took longer than most to go from newbie/utterly ####-tastic to decent, and fairly long from decent to above average. I even had a hero-imm (Gondrak) and while it didn't workout for me personally, I got an amazing glimpse of how this place works.

That being established, I can safely say that the staff basically does what you're asking. I think you are mistaking a lack of transparency with a lack of open discussion. When you take into account how many pointless flamewars have occured over certain issues, its fairly easy to say why.

Part of the problem I think many of us have with your post is that you build fairly sensable, decent ideas on a foundation of ####. Ranger revamp has been begged for for years, and saying not many people ask for it makes the rest of your post hard to take.

Take full-looting...you might think are not addressed properly because people consistently complain. Full Looting: Yeah, it sucks. I don't do it unless the person has to me, or if a specifc part of my role dictates it (which is next to never). Is it broken just because it hurts when it happens to you? No. It keeps gear moving and ads risk to PK. A win is hollow when you don't risk anything to get that win.

-Ganking: That was a big one for years, and you know what? They addressed it. Anti-gank code...I think this is a prime example of how real imm time and effort is put into hot-button problems that people complain about WHEN something actually needs to be done (as opposed to when something just sucks when it happens to you).

I'm sorry if this comes off as a rant, but I really feel that people imagine things that simply don't happen when it comes to the IMM world. I'll be happy to field any questions as this did come off as fairly disjointed.

And now, excuse me while I dismount my soap-box

Transparency is a mixed blessing. If your players are good and problems don't pop up like major bug fixes or a suddenly active personal life, letting your playerbase know what you are doing can be excellent for public relations. However, I've been on both the implementor & coder end of things and felt the wrath of players angry with how things were prioritized or when priorities were forced to shift. Secrecy is a way of protecting your coders' morale, and as much as I hate it as a player, you have to protect your staff. I have to praise the staff of CF, for leaks do not seem to be a great problem.

I do advocate the publication of mission and vision statements, the latter not too different from the president's State of the Union address. The mission statement provides a means by which the staff and players can evaluate whether a particular change is ultimately a good. A well-articulated vision statement will paint in bold strokes what the staff perceives to be good and what needs work, and although it isn't binding, it gives the playerbase a sense of where the mud might be going.

The official forums act as polling station and press room, and as such they cannot help but shape policy, coding projects, and player discussion. I don't think we could hope for better.

I think you're somewhat off base on your presumptions. Ranger change - fantastic. Absolutely fantastic, and frequently requested, and much needed. I think it'll settle down a bit, its a very popular class now while people check it out, but in the long term I think this was a very good thing.

I also think people get more angry at attitudes than misbalance. They get more angry at people than they do at the game. Do you get pissed off that the NPC that killed you and looted your gear or the guy who coded it and put it into the game?

And CF, like any other community, requires people skills and playing along with others nicely. Sometimes a post you write will hurt your rep and relationship with others a lot more than anything you've actually done in CF and it all boils down to respect for each other and treating each other the way we'd like to be treated. I think sometimes both players and imms lose sight of that amongst the turmoil.

I think cf strikes a balance that seems to work ok, given how the copy-cat muds have dried up.

Often people ask for stuff that suits their current cabal/class/race/desire to have uber gear.

Yet if they had all this stuff, it would make it less special and spoil it for themselves or others, in many cases.

nt

Well, the same point would then apply to other changes made based on player's feedback. As Nepenthe said, they do listen to people, and I think he assumes that they are able to filter out such requests. However, the fact that some issues that were hot for so many years are still untouched suggests to me that there is some miscommunication or misinterpretation. I don't think this means that IMMs are not going to listen as you propose - but I suggest that something needs to be done so that the right message is delivered.

All I'm saying is that I think it is a good thing that imms don't always do what people want, not that they don't listen.

However, the fact that some issues that were hot for so many years are still untouched suggests to me that there is some miscommunication or misinterpretation.

Or that we are volunteers who do what we can, when we can. Coders don't grow on trees. Just because we don't implement every good idea, doesn't mean we don't think they are good ideas.


G.

"However, the fact that some issues that were hot for so many years are still untouched suggests to me that there is some miscommunication or misinterpretation"

"Just because we don't implement every good idea, doesn't mean we don't think they are good ideas."

To further what Grurk said, just because one, or even a handful, of the playerbase thinks an idea would be a great thing to have, doesn't mean we the staff agree. Quite frankly, we as staff have a view of the game that you as players can't see.

For example, maybe you think deathblow is overpowered because you keep dying to it. But we can look at the statistics and see that Ragers with deathblow have awful pk ratios, and most people are kicking their asses, except in a few circumstances. And yet, your proposal to nerf deathblow meets with some support, from other people that have died to it. We're not going to spell the answer out for you every time, thus looking back on the issue it seems as if we ignored that great idea to nerf deathblow.

An opinion is only as good as the data it is based on. I know people like to say "I'm entitled to my opinion, it's as good as yours!", but it's just not true. For example, if you ask a 16 year old if they think 16 year olds are good or bad drivers, they would likely say 16 year olds are awesome drivers. But if you ask a police offier if 16 year olds are good or bad drivers, he would likely say they're the worst drivers out there. They both have their opinion formed on the data available to them... and the police officer has the experience, knowledge and resources to put far more weight in to his opinion.

So in short, we do listen to suggestions. Sometimes we agree, but don't think it's a priority over other projects on the table. Sometimes we agree, but don't have the resources to get it done. But a lot of the time, we don't agree at all. Often we'll explain why, but for a myriad of reasons, sometimes we wont.

An opinion is only as good as the data it is based on

Absolutely, that's part of my point. It is good to know that the changes that are made are made based on the factual data rather than unedicated guess. However, how do you gather these data? If only through statistics, than I would argue that this is as one-sided as people's opinion.

As it becomes clear, it is very hard to mine people's posts for real facts about the game mechanis, because their posts are so biased by their immediate feelings. Yet, you need these data to make an objective conclusion and choose the most important issue to address.

What I suggest is that perhaps you could become more explicit at gathering people's opinions. Make it a routine procedure (such as a specialized poll), and partially the bias will disappear. Disallow discussion (only reply to yourself or imms), and you remove the flame.

Can you make it more explicit that your decisions are dependent on these data, so that people can see that even if something important to them is not implemented it is because it is not critical to the game as a whole? And if something is implemented, it is because it is important to the game. By making it explicit, you establish the constructive communication channels with players. And if you gather such data and feedback at one place (such as a decidate forum or pool of polls), you won't need to repeat yourself.

Thanks for your answer, Aarn. I am glad to know that there are such a pragmatic people as you are among IMMs. Just make things more explicit, as you did in this post, because it helps understanding and calms negative emotions.

If only through statistics, than I would argue that this is as one-sided as people's opinion.

Don't forget every imm up here was a mortal before we got on the staff. Most of us still play mortals now and again. Additionally, myself and most of the imms up here have the ability to listen to every conversation, observe every fight, and otherwise see virtually every number that goes in to it behind-the-sceens. Of course none of us can actually observe anywhere near ALL of that as an individual, but given the size of our staff we can cover quite a bit amongst ourselves. The things we do are not based only on statistics.

We do run polls on occasion. There's one on the left side of your screen right now. I wouldn't necessarily be adverse to running them more often, but I'm not sure how a poll would acomplish what you're talking about. Forum discourse works quite well, even if we don't have an answer to post for every question.

Basically, we can't reply in-detail to every idea post. Say someone posts their proposal for a complete shaman revamp. I read it and think it sounds great, so I post "This sounds awesome!" Then we start a staff discussion on it. After we've hashed it out and crunched numbers a bit, we realise this change would be highly abuseable, unbalancing, impractical, or maybe just way too much work for minimal benefit. If we then don't do anything with it, we'll have a bunch of pissed people that were expecting a shaman revamp.

Take comfort in the fact that many of us on the staff read nearly every post that goes up. Sometimes even those on unofficial forums, although it's harder to garner good info from there due to the level of misinformation that goes around. We are noting your suggestions, even if we can't explain the details surrounding our thought process.

:)

It is interesting to see how people see what they want to see, and ignore that what they don't want to see (or may be don't expect to see)...

Sorry, but I had to take umbrage with the PK ratio statement...

If I walk up to you and use an item I found that instantly kills anyone I land a hit on...would it matter if I had a bad PK ratio anyway in determining if that item is overpowered?

I'm not going to get into my thoughts on deathblow, but just in general I think you guys put too much stock in PK ratio.

If you want to bring it up as an analogy, use the real argument against it, that people don't like dying due to a lucky RNG round or getting taken out 100% based on a cabal skill and not player skill. Its the same reason people dislike assassinate and power word kill and etc etc etc. It has nothing to do with "overpowered" in that ragers are "too tough to fight". Its, "Damn, I was beating this guy up with tactics and skill and he just got lucky and waxed me because he hit 3 deathblows in a round."

Maybe that wouldn't have fit what you were saying as well, but at least it'd be accurate.

Edit : And reading further down your post, your thing about opinions having to be backed by data is sorta silly. I think assassinate is lame, even though its only killed me a few times. Does that make me a moron or something? I just don't like how it works...I don't see what's wrong with holding that opinion.

>If I walk up to you and use an item I found that instantly
>kills anyone I land a hit on...would it matter if I had a bad
>PK ratio anyway in determining if that item is overpowered?

No; however, if 90% of the people with that item still ran a terrible PK ratio, it would probably indicate there was more going on than meets the eye, don't you think?

>I'm not going to get into my thoughts on deathblow

But, then you do. I'll comment below. :)

>If you want to bring it up as an analogy, use the real
>argument against it, that people don't like dying due to a
>lucky RNG round or getting taken out 100% based on a cabal
>skill and not player skill. Its the same reason people dislike
>assassinate and power word kill and etc etc etc.

People dislike dying period.

The assumption by some people is that if you die to one of those things, you just got unlucky. That's a dangerous assumption, because it makes it hard for you to get better. The reality is more like: If an assassin has even a 1% chance to drop you with assassinate, most likely, you ####ed up. The 99% of the time you win that bet is you getting lucky, not the other way around.

>It has
>nothing to do with "overpowered" in that ragers are "too tough
>to fight". Its, "Damn, I was beating this guy up with tactics
>and skill and he just got lucky and waxed me because he hit 3
>deathblows in a round."

Damn, I was beating this guy up with tactics and skill and he just got lucky and quaffed a teleport potion to save his life. Or he got lucky and his progged gear killed me. Or he's just lucky I can't buy heals. Or he's just lucky I can't get the right invoker shield or a fly or prep myself up for this fight. Etc. Welcome to life as a Rager.

It's tough and unlucky all over.


>Edit : And reading further down your post, your thing about
>opinions having to be backed by data is sorta silly. I think
>assassinate is lame, even though its only killed me a few
>times. Does that make me a moron or something?

Only if you think your dislike should motivate me to change something about how the game works.

The assumption by some people is that if you die to one of those things, you just got unlucky. That's a dangerous assumption, because it makes it hard for you to get better. The reality is more like: If an assassin has even a 1% chance to drop you with assassinate, most likely, you ####ed up. The 99% of the time you win that bet is you getting lucky, not the other way around.

- Unless you do things like solo raid cabals. Which is kinda my whole point about "instant kills". Oft they teach a motto of avoidance rather than defense (usually because often avoidance IS the defense, depending on what you're talking about). One is less fun than the other.

Damn, I was beating this guy up with tactics and skill and he just got lucky and quaffed a teleport potion to save his life.

- How is this luck?

Or he got lucky and his progged gear killed me.

- More like your spellbane didn't fire.

Or he's just lucky I can't buy heals. Or he's just lucky I can't get the right invoker shield or a fly or prep myself up for this fight. Etc. Welcome to life as a Rager.

- I'm not seeing what this has to do with deathblow one-shotting people. How do you hold onto that progging gear? How do you arrange to have invoker shields, or fly, or whatever and keep the foe from finding ways around it? That's skill. Maximizing deathblow is trivial to say the least.

It's tough and unlucky all over.

- If you didn't think instant kills weren't "unfun" you wouldn't have sacrificed your pendant. Was that fun for Aeria? Probably not in the slightest. You're right, deaths in general aren't the most fantastic things in the world. Deaths like that, however, can hardly be compared to "not teleporting in time". That's the same thing with deathblow, assassinate, power word kill, etc.

Only if you think your dislike should motivate me to change something about how the game works.

- Heh, the problem lies in the misconception that "overpowered" is an opinion. Overpowered actually has something of an established metric, even if the line of what is overpowered is blurs on occassion. Regardless, if you opt to say "overpowered is 98% pk ratio, less than 45 deaths over X period of time", and you're using a metric that has numeric values, then yes it loses its status as an opinion. In that case, you're making either a factual or fallacious statement and yes, in that situation, we have no viable statistics other than what ones we're handed. Some of us out here as players though, do occassionally hold a different opinion on what constitutes as overpowered or not, or more importantly, where that line lays and upon what metrics. I was mostly just busting Aarn's chops, because honestly there's no numerical way to say something is crap and another thing is fair. Then game balance wouldn't be much of a challenge would it?

>The assumption by some people is that if you die to one of
>those things, you just got unlucky. That's a dangerous
>assumption, because it makes it hard for you to get better.
>The reality is more like: If an assassin has even a 1% chance
>to drop you with assassinate, most likely, you ####ed up. The
>99% of the time you win that bet is you getting lucky, not the
>other way around.
>
>- Unless you do things like solo raid cabals. Which is kinda
>my whole point about "instant kills". Oft they teach a motto
>of avoidance rather than defense (usually because often
>avoidance IS the defense, depending on what you're talking
>about). One is less fun than the other.

There's still a lot you can do there. I solo-raid cabals without detect hidden all the time. I don't think I've ever been assassinated doing it.

>Damn, I was beating this guy up with tactics and skill and he
>just got lucky and quaffed a teleport potion to save his
>life.
>
>- How is this luck?

For the most part, it's not. For the most part, neither are most deathblow-related wins.

>Or he got lucky and his progged gear killed me.
>
>- More like your spellbane didn't fire.

Or it's something where spellbane doesn't matter. Play a Battle berserker for a while and I'd guess your number of deaths to those kind of things would be roughly similar to the number of kills you get via super deathblow luck in a fight you would lose.

>Or he's just lucky I can't buy heals. Or he's just lucky I
>can't get the right invoker shield or a fly or prep myself up
>for this fight. Etc. Welcome to life as a Rager.
>
>- I'm not seeing what this has to do with deathblow
>one-shotting people.

Of course you don't. You don't play Battle. :)

And let it be said, while I enjoy playing Battle, my most infamous characters are not, in fact, Battle, but rather other characters (mostly, but not all, mages) that fight Battle. I feel sorry for many of them as I'm killing them because they have it so bad in some ways.

>How do you hold onto that progging gear?

How do you hold onto a good enough weapon/weapons and enough damroll to make deathblow a real threat, especially given your hefty restrictions on healing, transportation, and utility magic?

>How do you arrange to have invoker shields, or fly, or
>whatever and keep the foe from finding ways around it?

How do you find creative ways to deal with invoker shields, or fly, or whatever, without access to magic or, really, preps of any kind?

>That's
>skill. Maximizing deathblow is trivial to say the least.

Maximizing deathblow isn't as trivial as you seem to think, but that aside, there is a lot more skill to playing a Battle character and being able to even be in the position to plaster someone with deathblow than you acknowledge.

Lunchtime's over. I'll have to call it there for now.

This is primarily a good illustration of my point.

Before we get too off topic, I'm of the position that offensive skills "weigh more heavily" than defensive/survival oriented ones. That's my opinion, regardless of whether or not there are any statistics to back it up. Its merely an opinion which I hold that the ability to kill others is more important/weighty than the ability to *not die*. Now, I may misinterpret your posts, but judging by a lot of the things you bring up, I find that you weigh them both on the same footing. Or at the least, you value ratio more than I do.

In that light, we disagree and most likely always will, and there's no numbers to crunch or stats to point out that will ever dissuage you or I since its not something that has anything to do with statistics but rather, an opinion about the worth of some skill/power/whatever in a game.

That's what I was trying to get across, albeit my wording isn't the greatest.

>However, the fact that some issues that were hot for so
>many years are still untouched suggests to me that there is
>some miscommunication or misinterpretation.
>
>Or that we are volunteers who do what we can, when we can.
>Coders don't grow on trees. Just because we don't implement
>every good idea, doesn't mean we don't think they are good
>ideas.

Just as a side note - do you know how many coders/writers are there playing CF? Could be an interesting poll, or even a profile option...

I understand that perhaps sometimes you do what is interesting to do, because you do it in your free time and whant to get some satisfaction and relaxation perhaps from the real-life work. I do think however that it is important to concentrate on the important problems. If they do not seem interesting, there are several solutions to that.

I often find that something that didn't seem interesting becomes so once I start working on it, and other people's appreciation can also be motivating. Or you can attract other people who are interested in such an idea and may have some time to dedicate to it, such as players.

I do understand that sometimes you do agree that there is a problem but there may not be an easy solution or it may not be important, and you don't tell players about it. And I think you should at least tell people that you know there is a problem, and you consider it for the future.

>- rangers - I havn't seen much of the requests for a change of
>such a magnitude.

There's not much to say about that other than you read posts very selectively, then. For every person who asked about shifter emoting, ten or twenty asked about rangers.

>Also remember that different things affect the balance
>differently. For example, what may have the most impact - ten
>new areas or a few new skills?

The assumption there is that we have equal resources to produce anything we might choose, and that's an incorrect assumption.

>People like to be heard. If you agreed to the first point,
>you'd need to hear. It is impossible to guess what is good
>for players without giving them a way to speak up. Forums are
>a good start, but by themselves it is like a hammer without a
>blacksmith - you need to listen to what people say. Do it
>manually or use some scanning tools - you'll get a list of
>issues.

Which we do. However, there's a balance between what players complain about and what they would really prefer. For example, people often bitch about full looting, but do you really think a CF with no looting would be better?

To be fair, most of the ranger request weren't made particularly recently. Perhaps this person is new?

Come on, man :) Trying to distract attention from the message by trying to distredit the author... Just comment on the message itself.

The original post said there hadn't been any requests for a major revamp of rangers. That was out and out wrong. Two classes ALWAYS got mentioned at or near the top of the list for needing a revamp - rangers and shamans.

So the original poster is either shortsighted, selfish, flat-out wrong, or rather, unaware that players HAVE been requesting a ranger revamp (albeit just not within the last couple of months).

Actually, I used the example of shifters and rangers, among other things, to demonstrate that such opinions are indeed very often impulsive and may not be related to the actual game experience. It is hard then to decide which issue is important and deserves significant effort and which is unimportant and can be addressed by a small adjustment.

And in whole, the point of the post wasn't really about shifters and rangers. Even if the voices for a particular feature are appropriately evaluated, I don't think that alone is enough to consider some feature. Among other things, it is important to consider player-base dynamics, such as growth of population. Perhaps it is considered - I don't know.

But fhe fact that some serious issues, which have damaging effect on playerbase, are not considered at all and some issues, which have almost no effect, are implemented with significant efforts, suggests that other factors play more important role. Partially, Nepenthe confirmed that by saying that there is a disbalance in resources.

>> Actually, I used the example of shifters and rangers, among other things, to demonstrate that such opinions are indeed very often impulsive and may not be related to the actual game experience. It is hard then to decide which issue is important and deserves significant effort and which is unimportant and can be addressed by a small adjustment.

Well, except that you got it backwards which feature was heavily requested and which one wasn't. That kinda screwed over your entire effort:requestedness ratio theory.


>> And in whole, the point of the post wasn't really about shifters and rangers. Even if the voices for a particular feature are appropriately evaluated, I don't think that alone is enough to consider some feature. Among other things, it is important to consider player-base dynamics, such as growth of population. Perhaps it is considered - I don't know.

Player-base dynamics is most definitly required if one is to "appropriately consider" a requested feature. And, judging by the general level of thinking applied in these discussions, I'd say that it's fairly obvious that it's taken into consideration.


>> But fhe fact that some serious issues, which have damaging effect on playerbase, are not considered at all and some issues, which have almost no effect, are implemented with significant efforts, suggests that other factors play more important role. Partially, Nepenthe confirmed that by saying that there is a disbalance in resources.

1) The "disbalance in resources" thing was related to the area building vs. coding context that you set up. It really didn't confirm anything except that some people can code, some people (I think all staff members are required to) can build areas and some people do other stuff.

2) We all have different perspectives. Something that you don't mind at all or think sucks, might rock in somebody else's eyes. And even the staff do things for fun.. Even if there would be a need for something like anti-multikilloocgangbangabsloot-code, it's alot less fun for most people than to do something like a new class. But in the end, I think the reason we don't see more changes of the kind that you insinuate, is because they would negatively affect the game in non-obvious ways.

>But fhe fact that some serious issues, which have damaging
>effect on playerbase, are not considered at all


I'd love to hear what you think those are.

In a sense, that is a comment on the message itself, and whether or not you think so (having argued with Tac myself many a time in the past) it's meant charitably.

I mean, if someone posted "Knitting is boring and I think you should change it", would you write a long drawn-out reply or would you say "Uh, I think you meant to post that somewhere else?"

Well, to me, his post is clearly an off-topic. But my reply wasn't good as it was driven by emotions, for which I apologise.

Thanks for the comments,

>
>>- rangers - I havn't seen much of the requests for a change
>of
>>such a magnitude.
>
>There's not much to say about that other than you read posts
>very selectively, then. For every person who asked about
>shifter emoting, ten or twenty asked about rangers.

That's exactly my point. Neither mine assessment, nor yours ("ten or twenty") is correct.

>
>>Also remember that different things affect the balance
>>differently. For example, what may have the most impact -
>ten
>>new areas or a few new skills?
>
>The assumption there is that we have equal resources to
>produce anything we might choose, and that's an incorrect
>assumption.

Actually, I was assuming exactly what you said when I was writing but perhaps I hasn't expressed myself clearly.

I do understand that the fact that the features are released with different pace can be a consequences of uneven distribution of resources. I can imagine that shortage of resources can be a result of various reasons, such lack of interest in current staff, lack of skills or time. I suggest that this can, to some degree, be a consequence of, say, hiring procedures, work distribution, motivating instruments. I am confident you can name several other reasons. The point is - once you've identified the weak point constructively - it is possible to address it.


>
>>People like to be heard. If you agreed to the first point,
>>you'd need to hear. It is impossible to guess what is good
>>for players without giving them a way to speak up. Forums
>are
>>a good start, but by themselves it is like a hammer without
>a
>>blacksmith - you need to listen to what people say. Do it
>>manually or use some scanning tools - you'll get a list of
>>issues.
>
>Which we do. However, there's a balance between what players
>complain about and what they would really prefer.

Yes, I would agree that sometimes people don't realise short-term vs. long-term needs. But then, it is even more dangerous to make decisions blindly. Are you sure you can distinguish between a request affected by a recent event or after few years observation?

> For
>example, people often bitch about full looting, but do you
>really think a CF with no looting would be better?

I can't say for sure. I definitely wouldn't mind trying and see how it works. CF has many other dimensions of fun, and PK without full looting sounds different but no less exciting, to me. I can support this point by giving an example of players who do NOT full-loot but do get satisfaction from a win. You may say that looting has other functions, such as wealth distribution, but the impact from it so hard to assess, that I would abstain making statements in either direction, eitehr for it or against it, without careful study. But the interesting point is that the solution to "full looting" is not "no looting", or rather not only.

I want to stress that there should be several solutions. And that there are ways to gather people's opinion on that, without causing flaming discussions, analyse some of them, perhaps even try several approaches. Similar with many other problems.

>That's exactly my point. Neither mine assessment, nor yours
>("ten or twenty") is correct.

Not to be an ass... but, I am an ass, so #### it. What are you even basing that on?

>I do understand that the fact that the features are released
>with different pace can be a consequences of uneven
>distribution of resources. I can imagine that shortage of
>resources can be a result of various reasons, such lack of
>interest in current staff, lack of skills or time. I suggest
>that this can, to some degree, be a consequence of, say,
>hiring procedures, work distribution, motivating instruments.
>I am confident you can name several other reasons. The point
>is - once you've identified the weak point constructively - it
>is possible to address it.

Is it? That assumes no factors are beyond your control.

>Yes, I would agree that sometimes people don't realise
>short-term vs. long-term needs. But then, it is even more
>dangerous to make decisions blindly. Are you sure you can
>distinguish between a request affected by a recent event or
>after few years observation?

For the most part, yes.

>I can't say for sure. I definitely wouldn't mind trying and
>see how it works. CF has many other dimensions of fun, and PK
>without full looting sounds different but no less exciting, to
>me. I can support this point by giving an example of players
>who do NOT full-loot but do get satisfaction from a win. You
>may say that looting has other functions, such as wealth
>distribution, but the impact from it so hard to assess, that I
>would abstain making statements in either direction, eitehr
>for it or against it, without careful study.

And yet, here we are. :)

>But the
>interesting point is that the solution to "full looting" is
>not "no looting", or rather not only.

There are other "intermediary" solutions, but for the CF dynamic, they're all equally bad.

This is a discussion we (being the players of CF) have had several dozen times over the last twelve years. It's likely that at least a handful of these discussions are still in the forum archives for searching.

Discussion is all well and good, but there are only so many times I'm willing to have the same discussion. I'd argue that if you're not willing to research what's been said in the past, what points have been made for or against changing different things, and so on... then no, you have not earned a more comprehensive response than "You must be new here." or "We've discussed this many times before."

I "missed" the "ass" part :), but this I find important:

This is a discussion we (being the players of CF) have had several dozen times over the last twelve years. It's likely that at least a handful of these discussions are still in the forum archives for searching.

Discussion is all well and good, but there are only so many times I'm willing to have the same discussion. I'd argue that if you're not willing to research what's been said in the past, what points have been made for or against changing different things, and so on... then no, you have not earned a more comprehensive response than "You must be new here." or "We've discussed this many times before."

Two comments for that:

1. From my work experience, I know that sometimes it is useful to reevaluate the decisions made in the past, especially long time ago. Say, since CF has changed so drastically in the last three (may be four) years, in the circumstances of these days you may come to a different decision for the same problem. Even more abstractly, sometimes the problems lie in the basic rules forming the system (such as full-looting being an axiom).

2. Indeed, it would be useful to examine the similar discussions of the past. Do you have some references? Thanks.

Well, again, I don't read forums often, but I will say this. I don't know why so many people complain about looting so often. Personally, I've played thousands of games, and that is one of the largest things that keeps me playing cf. There is just not the same feeling of victory when you kill someone and it just makes him pop up at another area, and you know that no matter how many times you kill him, it will not aid you or truly harm him. The looting is a huge aspect for both people who like pk, as well as people who like rp. Being able to DO something through fighting is, FUN. It may not be as fun to be on the other side of it, true. But you have to give and take some. Anyhow, please don't change the looting overly immortals, I've played tons of muds, and that is one of the top 5 things that keeps me here, personally, and I'm sure that some of the population would agree.