I am posting this here because that thread on the bfield is a messy ####storm.

I think that many players have a perception that the game is designed for about double the active players it has. The prime example of this is the structure of Empire. With 120 people on at any given time, lets say as a guess 20-25 of them would be empire (maybe those numbers are waaaay off but I think it is somewhere close to a good guess?). If that were the case inter-empire politics would suddenly be much more dynamic and the stated design of the cabal (lawful evil political in fighting) would work better. If there are only 6 imperials logged on, it is much harder for there to be dynamic inter-cabal interactions. A similar example is outlander. If outlander regularly had 12 people on, you might see more align based disputes in outlander, rather than it happening but being the exception rather than the rule. It would also make stealth retrievals much more common and viable. Doing a stealth retrieval with 3 is much more doable than with one, for instance.

Another prime example is Hell/Silent exploration. With 50 players on, lets say 9 are heroes. Half are against you outright because of class/race/cabal specifics, and another 2 dont like you for other reasons. That leaves you with one person to explore with, and you won't be doing much in either place (generally) with two people. With 120 on, maybe we would see some archmages die :)

It seems that for certain things to work as designed, 50 players average simply isn't sufficient.

Thoughts?

-Larcat

But what do you do about it, really? The only idea I had
to partially remedy this (the whole consolidating levels,
raise starting level schism) was declined flat out. I
wouldn't know any other options to consider.

As far as what is causing it, I'd say Battlefield 2 is a
big reason I think. Otherwise though, I saw a certain mud
I switch off playing back and forth with CF (Armageddon)
rise by an average of many 20-30 more than it used to be a
couple'a years ago, so maybe its part of that too.

- Runaktla

Unfortunately, GETTING those extra players, and keeping old ones. Is hard hard. What with the millions of muds out there, and graphical games getting more and more complex (and fun)


For a while there, We were losing alot of veteren players. I think most of it had to do with the fact that those veteren players just couldn't spend enough time on cf now that they are into their 30's.

And let us not kid ourselves. Now, more than ever, cf somewhat requires a minimum time input to start seeing the fun quotient return.


For a while there, it really seemed that we were losing veteren players faster than we were replacing them.

(I remember many nights as Grallon where I would think Cf EMPTY if it dropped to just 70 players)

I think some of the problem (lets not gild any lillies) in replacing normal attrition due to rl, is the fact that many of the changes over the past few years have been based on (at least it looks like from the outside) a philosophy of moving the mud away from a quick-fun-return-plug-and-play-pick-it-up-and-run-with-it mud...to making the mud "harder".

There is some backup to that philosophy, I think. Think back to the old atari 6400, and atari 7200 et. al. Those games that were way too easy, got played some, then dropped for more challenging games. because those games were more fun.

However, there is a very fine balance between challenging = fun. And Hard = too much of a learning curve to bring in new blood and keep their attention long enough to get them hooked.

This is a balance very few games actually get right. I don't think cf has it right yet.

I do think they are trying to get it right. But I don't know enough of the inside stuff to have an opinion on whether they are actually succeeding or making it worse.

I have to say, that you hit the nail on the head in regards to certain area explores/badass mobs. Even as a N/N char with no cabal affiliation, I can count on one hand the number of times I've been able to get a group to do any of the top-end area explore stuff. It's like pulling teeth.

You have to first get the party online all at once.

You then need to make sure no one in the group are enemies.

You have to then hope everyone in your group can stay 3+ hours.

Someone who knows the area must lead for a good chance of success.

You have to hope in the meanwhile of getting ready that any cabals your groupmembers are part of don't get raided. As you can see, this type of limiting makes the pool of 30 heroes online at most, tend to slim to about 5-6 chars possible.

As Larcat said, for stuff like Hell, Archmages in ST, etc. You are talking a massive project that, I can argue you with all day, will take OOC coordination of some sort to put together. Is that the intent of these areas? I don't have a solution per se, but an observation that these areas just aren't going to see the traffic they did 4 years ago unless some of you imms start playing mortals.

Thoughts?