Thought i'd bring this to the boards and see if I'm the only one that feels like this.

First of all, I'm all for making village inductions harder than other cabal inductions because of the potency of their powers. However, should they be such rehashing of garbled crap? I can't say I'm a regular player anymore, but I do log on from time to time to have some fun.

Recently I tried to play a villager, but after two interviews I couldn't help but delete in amazement and frustration. I don't want to bring any names up in this thread, but I've talked to a couple people that have had the same issue so I don't think this is particular to just a few characters. One of my interviews took (no joke) 2 hours real time, and it was 100% on village history. Basically I felt that the person interviewing me expected me to know every single event in the history of the village. Now this isnt' all that big of a problem for me per say, and I'm sure I knew more than the interviewer, but that's besides the point. The interviewer after two hours basically said 'Well I think you still have a lot to learn and we parted ways without a recommendation' (I roflled :p). But let's say I was a relatively new player and was trying to get inducted with my first villager, how would I EVER get inducted and get a chance to experience all the fun that CF can offer? If I was new I'd definitely be like 'bleh wtf this sucks that was the biggest waste of 2 hours in my life'. I logged on tonight (in the wee late hours) and I saw a dismal 9 people logged on (I imagine that there were a few more hidden and invis) and it just made me sad.

I'd rather make this post about something general and with more breadth than just about how it's tough to get into Battle with the current crop of villagers. The point of this is rather 'Has the game became run by elitists and become inacessible for the casual player, fun-seeker?'.

Obviously no one's forcing anyone to join cabals, etc.. and uncaballed is a very viable option. Furthermore, I'm definitely not a CF veteran and think that I deserve special treatment i.e. easy induction into cabals. But I do think that if someone like me who (I believe) represents the average CFer (I'm a decent RPer and decent Pker) feels this way, it might be an indication of something larger that's wrong with CF right now and it doesn't have anything to do with Immortals (or anything they have to do with).

In my opinion, CF's main attraction has always been the diverse playerbase who for the most part were all out there to have fun and let themselves be consumed by the vast world and intricate roleplay. Have we lost sight of this?

I think it's a great exercise to put yourself in the shoes of a newbie and think 'what would make the game funner for him right at this moment'. I think we'll all have more fun if the people we're playing with are enjoying themselves as well.

In fact my ragers were from a time when I totally sucked. But my last three characters were leaders (even if the first two had the position for a limited amount of time), and I did induction interviews for MARAN when it first went in. For MARAN back in the day, the interviews were gruelingly long and thats not really a lot of fun, it was more just to keep numbers down and see who really would stick it out and knew their ####.

Lately, with the mortal leaders, I can't help but let me the player influence my "style" if you will. Unless the guy I'm interviewing doesn't seem to have a clue about what is going on (or unless I'm intrigued by the character and just want to learn more about the innerworkings) my interviews are short. Anyone can look up helpfiles, get answers to questions from friends over IM's, etc. I'd rather see if they have a general idea of the cabal, induct them and see how they do. If they don't pan out, boot them and they can come back and try again. You really never know how someone is going to do in a cabal until they are in.

To pitch in on your thread, the one thing that has kept me away from ragers since I've come back is hearing about how much of the interview was about village history, and I as a player don't really care to "study" for that nor do I think the sort of "barbarian" I'd like to play would give two ####s either.

Having to sit for hours being asked obscure questions about the inquisition when me, the player, took part in the inquisition and so I dont give complete or full answers because I am RPing a character born in a different age and the arsehole I am being interviewed by tells me to go and read up the history. I even had one interview when some svirf thief hero asked me how BoltThrower found the tablet and I gave some vague answer and he said 'No, BT was hunting a goat and fell over it!' I laughed so ####ing hard and even more so when Ordasen stepped into view and said it was ####ing rubbish but not in those words exactly.
Then you get those like a certain hero at the moment who asks you the role of the scout, you give your answer and he then asks the question again like you answered wrong, only to have the commander send you a tell to say your answer was good and not to worry about it.
Maybe the rager cabal needs a stepped entry system when new applicants get truesight and have to scout, rack up kills and generally be useful to the cabal before they are blooded barbarians.
I would certainly prefer that to suffering the verbal diahorrea that some ragers spew in interviews.

-----Abernyte

P.S. I am starting to enjoy being back in the battle cabal again. My time in the wilderness of magic is over.

Sure, I come back as the God of Magic again and you go back to ragers.

Haggis-breath.

As long as he isn't playing a dwarf scout pole spec, of course :)

>Maybe the rager cabal needs a stepped entry system when new
>applicants get truesight and have to scout, rack up kills and
>generally be useful to the cabal before they are blooded
>barbarians.

Maybe they should only let people who know what they are doing in leadership positions.

Stepped entry a la Fortress sounds to me like a bad idea.

First of all, I'm all for making village inductions harder than other cabal inductions because of the potency of their powers. However, should they be such rehashing of garbled crap? I can't say I'm a regular player anymore, but I do log on from time to time to have some fun.

We've got some ideas for 'helping' the Village application process out. Mostly that means putting additional information in the hands of the players who are in leadership positions, so you don't have to rely so much on history lessons to weed out applicants.

Recently I tried to play a villager, but after two interviews I couldn't help but delete in amazement and frustration.

I've posted on this before, so I won't go into a lot of detail here. You'll experience both long and short interviews trying to get into any Cabal, and interviewers will ask you all sorts of questions. It's hit or miss.

I logged on tonight (in the wee late hours) and I saw a dismal 9 people logged on (I imagine that there were a few more hidden and invis) and it just made me sad.

Yeah, that's the low point of the day, though usually there's at least twenty on.

'Has the game became run by elitists and become inacessible for the casual player, fun-seeker?'.

I don't think so. There's a steep learning curve, but that's always been the case. If anything, I'd say the game is more newbie friendly now than ever.

As for the casual player, there have been times when my mortals are casual players, logging about three to eight hours a week. I usually don't join a Cabal for those characters, and find that I still get a great deal of satisfaction with logging on for an hour here and there and interacting with others. Your mileage may vary.

In my opinion, CF's main attraction has always been the diverse playerbase who for the most part were all out there to have fun and let themselves be consumed by the vast world and intricate roleplay. Have we lost sight of this?

Maybe some folks have; maybe this post will kick them in the butt and get them to remember, "Hey. It's a game. You're here to have fun, just like everyone else."

I think it's a great exercise to put yourself in the shoes of a newbie and think 'what would make the game funner for him right at this moment'. I think we'll all have more fun if the people we're playing with are enjoying themselves as well.

Amen.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

I am going to agree here as well. I think that applicants should be run through the ringer sort of like the squires for Fortress without actually being inducted or given village access.
The applicant who runs around scouting the enemy, killing mages and assisting in raids and counter raids should get the nod over the guy who knows who ambushed who 10 years ago.

I recently decided to try a rager applicant. I scouted, led ragers to mages, assisted in raids and counter raids and led ragers to the kills that I landed. I was then given an interview that lasted nearly an hour, and the entire hour was on the history of the cabal. There wasn't a single mention of tactics, accomplishments or anything that I thought was important for an applicant.

Is the history important? I have yet to hear a single rager ever talk about the history in detail after being inducted. The only time they talk about it is in the interview where you have to scan through 12 pages of copy/paste text to find the minute detail that the person who is interviewing you picked out.

I decided to delete because the funstick wasn't there for me. The funny thing about it is that I had twice as many mage kills in 1/10th of the hours of the person who interviewed me.

n/t

Went exactly as Lyr just stated.

I prayed in frustration about Vershalt the Bard of Battle.

I'm guessing you've changed your ways recently because I was like WTF?

You were really upset by the speech patterns Vershelt had. The actual questions were fine. I've always had the opinion I have now and frankly the one thing I think my characters have in common is that I generally have the same point in my interviews, I look for something in particular (which I will not mention here, for the benefit of the few who have yet to speak to one of my ragers).

I've never been one to go through the whole history like they describe here. So either you're problem was, as I said, with Vershelt's really limited speech ability, or you're thinking of someone else.

?

Actually. I recall now. It was pre Vershalt.

My bad.

-nt-

This exactly was one of my pet peves with Battle. The spirit of history is important yes. Ragers were betrayed and hence why the original hatred of magic. That is important, however who did what, who started X Y Z means #### in the overall play and philosophy of the cabal. I would often have to smack someone around for wanting people to be ####ing scholars instead of the barbarians they were trying to be.

Now I know this all means #### with me not being a player and Immortal anymore ...but well if your a scout or defender I can see some questioning about stragety and what not. Proding over how to take out foes bla bla bla. While berserkers I see more of a trial by fire and deeds of mage heads. Etc.

However Battle is in the hands of Kasty and Ysal and I fully trust their judgement. Kasty is an old hand of Battle who knows the true fun parts of battle and puts that ahead of many things for the game.

MORE BLOOD! less talk!

CF suffers because:

1) It is unholy in that walkin from one end to another can take more time than to use the flight paths on World of Warcraft(those who played CoH first know what I mean)

2) Gearing is a pain because it takes forever to find it and then of course if you lose it see point #1.

3) GIANORMOUS skill gap between players. Skilled players travel in packs which makes sense because they are drawn to each other. No one likes traveling with an incompetent character.

4) The learning curve.. even if you have played before.. is just TOO insane. The difference between the haves and have nots is too large. Makes the average to knew player feel unappreciated and unhappy.

"The point of this is rather 'Has the game became run by elitists and become inacessible for the casual player, fun-seeker?'."

I think it has. Ask yourself if someone started CF today, and could play an hour a day (A significant amount), how long would it take them to become 'competitive' against people like a Nepenthe, or a Jinroh? Three years? Five years? A month if they play a berserker villager (j/k heh)? Who has time like that to play a text MUD? Newer players aren't racking up 70 hours a week on CF, its those of us who know the MUD, have played it for years, and know exactly what to do and in what area etc.

Along elitist lines, preps come to mind. I think preps are a strange beast. As you play more, and explore more, you find more. What this has done has made exploring have an impact on PK. For the casual gamer, who just wants to fire up Zmud and get to business, this puts non-explorers at a terrible disadvantage in PK, and forces them to spend hours doing something they may not enjoy (Explore) to meet the challenge of those players who have had the time to explore. Further increasing the time-sink that RPG's in general inevitably become. This issue is not specific to CF. Look at Everquest etc, they all had this same issue. To really give yourself every chance for victory, you must spend a considerable amount of time gathering preps, gear, learning areas, learning skills/spells, etc.

I am sure some imm or elite player will come here and say "Gear and preps aren't the end-all, be-all of PK", and that's true, to a degree. But I think we all know that even a Cabdru would have got his #### pushed in if he ran around with no abs and a quick regear set. I will use preps as long as they are in the game, and in fact agree they have their uses. However it seems nowadays there are two camps of players.

Those that know preps (Older, more travelled players), and those who don't(Newer players).

Pertaining to your specific example, I think the village induction issues are more a result of the same subset of CF'ers playing villagers over and over and over again that causes them to have this mentality.

So to make a long (winded) story short, yes, I believe "to some degree" the game has become run by elitists.

But I think, first of all, there is a much wider variety of who is becoming the leader of cabals. Before, it always seemed to me it was the same people over and over.

There is without a doubt a large difference between the line of experienced and inexperienced. To the experienced, inexperienced players standout, for, well, their inexperience. And vice versa. Only once or twice during the span of my current character has anyone less experienced than myself ever thought to ask me "hey, where does that come from?". If I come across an inexperienced player who is wanting to learn more about fighting tactics, or where to get this or that, I will tell them, if it is appropriate to do so for my character. There is still a large mix of the spectrum playing CF. I never see anyone ever asking me for help, and believe me, my current (and several past) characters are the sort of characters who would be willing to help with just about anything. The way I learned to get better was to make myself a sought out group member, and ask as many questions as possible, and follow the people who do know stuff around as much as possible.

My advice to the inexperienced: Befriend everyone you possibly can. If you're bored, try calling up one of those people you met a long time ago. "Hey, I was just wandering around X area and found something I was looking for. My time and services have just been made available. Is there anything you want help with?"

Sure, more often than not they will say, nah, I don't need any help, but it's always worth a shot. And it may seem floofie, but there's nothing wrong with that. Learn to crawl before you walk - or run with the big dogs.

I don't even know if this post pertains to anything anyone said anymore. *sigh* sorry.

Even if your post had nothing to do with mine, I still liked it :)

I'm quite confident that if more people went *gasp* out of their way to help people get inducted..i.e. teaching them about the village instead of expecting them to somehow know who is #42 on the pillar would have a much more positive impact on the game.

I'm not saying that my characters even did this, I think some of them did, and some of them didn't. I'm also not trying to put a guilt trip on anyone, or condescend. I'm just trying to encourage all of us to make CF a whole lot better than it is right now, and let it achieve it's potential.

And the immortal response was that battle leaders set the induction requirments, so if you have a problem, make commander and change them. As you your other point, I think a lot of that is true... With the proliferation of preps I feel as though it's become an arms race much like the old defense practicing ways, only now it isn't a one time per character investment. You have to find preps (takes considerably longer than practicing defenses) and gather them over and over and over. I dunno, but it feels like trying to compete without having preps is just asking to get your ass kicked. Sure you can win some, especially if you are super patient like Nreisshe, but you can just throw down with people in general unless you've got the preps, because otherwise you'll hit one of the prep'd people and get steamrolled...

I have no solution.

Had a few village interviews of late as well, and apart from 1, the other talks and such were very scholarly. I do understand the importance of knowing history, but I also think that rager interviews where it's solely about how much history you know, shouldn't play the largest factor for induction. In fact, Battle of all cabals should be the most action>word cabal. I remember thinking to myself when asked certain questions, 'thank goodness i have logs to look through'. For the newbie, I believe, it will be an awful struggle just to get into the Cabal that interests him. Besides, I felt like I was doing homework. Having posted in a goodbye thread before on this, I believe that inductions shouldn't be based on 'passwords', but on the character's worth and efforts to learn and be part of the cabal. Just my 2 cents. :)

It's also very possible that I'm completely out of touch and me and a couple of the people I've talked to just don't play at the right times or have just had bad luck with interactions with their fellow CFers.

If so, tell me to shut up!

Scion: Without megaluck your generally gonna be waiting till late 30's if not hero before you have a chance to get in. You must display good rp skills and pk not suckiness to get in.

Fortress: Get an interview and your in. helps to participate in raid/defense

Empire: get donation gold and your in

Tribunal: repeat help 26 and your in, don't be a criminal, helps to participate in raid/defense

herald: mud sex behind the inn and your in (actually I honestly have no clue what they take for standards because while it is suposed to be an rp cabal and they do get some top notch roleplayers the vast majority of its members are floofi crap at both pk and rp beyond giggle hug)

Village: read 2 works in the lyceum get 2 recs and your in (if you get one rec you should be able to get them all theoretically) If your having trouble simply rank with another app and get his when he is inducted, help raid/defense and your garunteed recs or hack the #### out of mages. My most memorable induction was after Iborenn said no dice and I said I won't bow or beg for a drow. Then I poped off 2 dozen mages and while stalking one kastellyn pops in says you have proven your worth through blood and inducted me.

outlander: spend lots of wildy time, get an interview and your on the right track to getting in

In general with the exception of scion all cabal standards for induction are very low. Village may seem tougher to the non village player because it is not a gimme like trib/fort/empire/outlander at times. The information your expected to know comes from a limited number of sources and you will be told where they are if you don't know and thats part of what makes the village unique. The only funny part is that the focus on history only exists in the induction process, personally I think it should be reflected in some of their skill echos kinda like the feral rage echos.

but here is your cheat sheet to beat any village interview

-read story in the lyceum and be able to summerize it
-major points include who was fighting, who got ambushed, where they got ambushed, who led folks to safety, what did bt find while hunting, who was he with, where did the massive giant come from

-Know the names of a few villagers (hint: you can make up one)
-In conjunction with that have a reason for admiring them

-though these are rare questions now, know some of the former battle imms and leaders (hint open up the old leaders page on the website for help this can also give you names for the knowing of a few villagers)

-know why you hate magic

-be ready to jump through hoops, this is important because it weeds out the less dedicated players and dedication is also a big factor in battle compared to other cabals. for instance your rogue murder druid would not fly at all in battle so a little extra time is taken to show that your willing to follow the strict and tough guidelines of a villager.

You may not like the process but it works to minimize the number of a-holes in the cabal who are just looking to make murder everything characters.

Granted, my impartiality might not be intact due to my penchant for villagers, but that also means I've done a *lot* of interviews.

I really don't think the process is that hard...to get my rec, you have to know, like he said, the history of the village well enough to answer a few simple questions, have a decent reason for hating magic (If i can tell you're new, a mediocre one will do), and have killed atleast one or two mages.

If you meet those requirements, I'll give you a shot. If not, I'll tell you to go do them...pretty simple. If I have more time for an in-depth interview, I'll do it, but otherwise thats the basic structure...and, by the way, seems to work for when I'm being interviewed too.

The village may have a more in-depth process, like the man said, than say empire or tribunal, but its there for a good reason.

Treebeard

Yeah, I've played more villagers than any other caballed characters and when I look back I see them as the 'good 'ol days of CF'. Which is really only like 2 years ago.

My fondest memories are playing this one dwarven villager who had like 16 con by the time he was lvl 40 but it was probably the most fun I've ever had. I recently spoke to my friend who just played Kuchu, a recently deleted arial villager who was scolded for dying a few times in one login session. WTF???? Isn't that what the village is all about? Blood, guts and glory? Hearing him being a bit depressed about how others in the village were berating him for dying a death that could've been 'avoided' really just sickened me.

I miss the good ol' days of Acaga flurrying a sanctuaried Urog before finally dying to a 4 man empire gang and everyone in the village being like 'Damn, that's how it's done'. I'm sure now everyone now would just say 'You could've fleed and not had to regear'. Bleh.

I just realized this post has nothing to do with anything else in this thread, but oh well I enoyed reminiscing.

Well I've voiced my opinion on the process in previous threads. I will say though there is a big difference between dying in a gutsy and brave way (ala taking one with you as you go) and running yourself into deathtraps with no hope of even the smallest of victories** - jumping off a cliff several times to prove you are not afraid to die, isn't helping the war on magic IMHO. There are even passages in the Battle texts that warn about crossing the line on this one, so he shouldn't have been suprised at being called out on it.



** unless it's specifically your role to be that way.

Obviously I don't know the specifics of Kuchu's deaths. Perhaps there was just cause for the scolding. At any rate, this thread is more about CF for the casual fun-seeking mudder than the spirit of the village. So I'll just drop this tangent.

Come up with a good role and pray to Kasty. Have a neat angle on things, and just outshine them all, then take commander and change things. Problem solved.

Now on to more constructive points I suppose.
The whole battle history thing? Meh I hated that too I think its moronic. All it does is it stops the newblits from playing battle smash characters.
If your a vet and you want to play a battle smash char you just go recite some crap to treebeard and Poof you have a rec no matter how badly you suck, or how much of an asshat you are.

And I agree with the Acaga part I was Iborenn and man I think ragers gotten really ####ing cowardly.

I don't really disagree with anything you said. I think you mistook my 'I can't get into battle' into 'how do I get into battle'.

The crux of my post was rather 'Why is it so time consuming and difficult to get any enjoyment out of CF right now?'.

Talking about village history for over a real life hour when that's basically all the time you have to log on just isn't fun for me and makes me want to NOT log on again. I'm sure some of you have the luxury of playing 8 hour long sessions (I used to be able to do this all the time). Such is not the case and I guess I'm just reluctant to accept the fact that I no longer have a place in CFland. I guess i'll just have to live with that.

My experience as a recent village app is that there are some villagers that ask you stupidass questions regarding the Village that you wouldn't know unless you did a copy/paste and read through it and those who focus less on the history. I personally don't think knowing the history that thorough is crucial.

For whoever spent 1+ hours speaking about history, sucks to be you I guess. Try another Villager...usually it works out.

Come on, man, don't be so dramatic. We all have had cabal inductions that were like pulling teeth or that we had to claw and scrape and fight for one way or another.

I'll freely admit that, historically, more of these for me have been Battle than any other cabal... but, you know, sometimes that's just the way it is. That's the way it's always been.

I wonder if I have a log of the last time I tried to get you to induct me into a cabal. Given this thread, you might find it a little humbling. ;) (And that's me saying that, and I generally love your characters.)

Hehe.

Wow, colour me surprised :p.

I'm sure it would be humbling from the sounds of it, because I think I make for an easy interview. But I'm sure in my peak playing times I belonged to that 'elitist' group. So maybe I wouldn't be so surprised, but rather ashamed with myself.

At any rate, I think my post ended up being 'Hey look at me why can't I get inducted into Battle whine whine whine blah blah blah'.

I swear that wasn't the intention of my post, nor was it to be overly dramatic or to pull a 'sky is falling' post. I agree that if any cabal should be tough to get into, it's Battle. But tough != reciting a bunch of crap written 10 years ago for the lyceum.

A last thought. I think maybe I'm just shocked at how out of touch I've become with CF after not actively playing in the past 6 months or so. Just goes to show you how deep and complex a game CF is. I think I will leave it at that.


Oh and if I didn't induct you, it's probably because Cabruesque he must not have been. :)

Heh kidding. Thanks for not just ignoring my post.

>Wow, colour me surprised :p.
>
>I'm sure it would be humbling from the sounds of it, because I
>think I make for an easy interview. But I'm sure in my peak
>playing times I belonged to that 'elitist' group. So maybe I
>wouldn't be so surprised, but rather ashamed with myself.

Nah, I'm not trying to dis on you... I'm just saying, I think you get a different perspective of the same event as inductee vs. leader, and that I think that you as a guy who's been there can understand that.

>At any rate, I think my post ended up being 'Hey look at me
>why can't I get inducted into Battle whine whine whine blah
>blah blah'.
>
>I swear that wasn't the intention of my post, nor was it to be
>overly dramatic or to pull a 'sky is falling' post. I agree
>that if any cabal should be tough to get into, it's Battle.
>But tough != reciting a bunch of crap written 10 years ago for
>the lyceum.

Agreed there, I've never really liked the in-depth history quizzes. I think demanding that someone know the stuff about Battle in 'help story' is absolutely fair; get much beyond that and it gets a little silly as an induction test. (In the rites I would think that was kosher, though.)

Although, that said, I'm not sure how you do a much better standard interview process for Battle.

The 'what's your favorite guy on the pillar and why' quiz always felt to me like asking if you'd played Battle before. Not quite, but, you know.

The recommendation system, years ago was more about who you knew OOC than anything else. I'd like to think isn't anymore.

The 'bring me a bunch of mage heads' test? For a berserker, sure. Scout or defender? Eh. Not to say that scout and defender roles can't be about killing a huge pile of mages personally, but they don't necessarily have to be.

>A last thought. I think maybe I'm just shocked at how out of
>touch I've become with CF after not actively playing in the
>past 6 months or so. Just goes to show you how deep and
>complex a game CF is. I think I will leave it at that.

I think you're drawing a generalization I don't think is necessarily accurate from one incident, but I could be wrong.

>Oh and if I didn't induct you, it's probably because
>Cabruesque he must not have been. :)

It's true! I think that character had about 100 hours and about 4 PKs at the time. :P

Ban the 5 guys that Perma-Rager from Battle and see what the new group does?

It's ####ing rediculous.

I do get frustrated that the same 5 guys keep playing Battle. I also get frustrated seeing Gorach play elf-bard #1473257234658.

But who are the staff to say who/what you can and can't play?