Recently there was some unpleasantness between a long-time player, and the imm staff. This prompted alot of back and forth with a portion of the playerbase weighing in with all sorts of opinions.

But, I have yet to see anyone come close to the real issue, as I see it, so I think I would like to explain *MY OWN* experiences with the imm staff, and how they have evolved to the playerbase, which might help a few people enjoy the game as a game more, and not get so bent out of shape about the little things.

****The specifics of this recent occurrence are irrelevant to my point, so I won't even address them*****


First. Let me say I'm almost positive that there are at least a few Imms in CF that I would probably have an active dislike for personally should we have to interact socially. But does that effect my enjoyment of the game? Nope.

Sure, there are alot of imms that make decisions on game balance and implementation and changing of current game mechanics that I have vehemently disagreed with. Has that effected my enjoyment of the game? Surprisingly to me, not really. You see, even though I can disagree with a change, I've found challenges in adapting to changes, and I've found I can take enjoyment from the Challenge of the change, even when I dislike the change.


Yes. On the forums at least, there is more than one Imm who has shown in the past (in my opinion) a propensity for, when confronted with a choice between reacting and responding politely/friendly/professionally and acidicly/agressively/pompously/personally, choosing the latter.

Has that affected my enjoyment of the *GAME*? nope. Not since I decided to not let it, and it's easier to follow through with that decision than some people realize. Why do I say that? Once you realize that this is a GAME, and less of a net-effect on your life as a 5 minute game of chutes and ladders with your 6 year old nephew, it's easier to just have fun with it and ignore the "drama".


***********BUT********** and this is a big but, and the point of the whole post.....and the one thing that the certain veteran involved in the recent snafu has never learned...


Despite all of the things above where I might vehemently disagree with either the Imms choices or demeanors....

I've found that in the past 10 years of playing cf on and off, interactions with the Immstaff, IN GAME, Are an extremely accurate and flawless mirror of your own personality.

Back when I was a young stupid, cocky, knowitall 20-something who couldn't seperate ic and ooc, and put way too much importance on in-game occurances, Sure, I had some bad meetings with the imms, where I would be justified in describing their behavior in very bad terms.


But. In the last 4-5 years or so, I have found that, Without exception, even when I have *STRONG* disagreements *IN GAME* with the staff....that when I approached the immstaff with a friendly, polite, civilized tone, the Immstaff has reciprocated to the Nines.



Now, Some people on various boards, will call "Friendly, polite, civilized tone" as "Boot kissing"...only with harsher words than "Boot".

My advice to *ALL* players, young and old, is to ignore those people.


You do *NOT* have to be Servile to be Polite. I could get into some social commentary about our society that I believe has given rise to the idea that "Polite/civilized = Servile/asslicking" But I won't in this venue (As it would anger some of the more-socialist-leaning of the staff, probably....heh *wink*).


Try to Behave like a Gentelman(woman) would. And I have found that without exception, the response was completely reciprocal.


As, I believe after reading the log of the recent unpleasantness, was the response to the Veteran.

If you must read that log, please read it as "What kind of attitude to *NOT* have, when severely disagreeing with the Imms".


He was Very haughty in his tone in demanding certain rights and notifications, which, to be honest, might have existed in a polite environment. But, once he stopped being polite himself, I think he *CHOSE* to forfeit any High-ground he *MIGHT* have had.


There is an old saying. He who raises his voice first, loses the argument.

I think in cf, when dealing with the imms...He who behaves like an arrogant lawyer who knows better than everyone and haughtily and angrily makes demands in anger....loses the argument.

It just hit me that all this drama is, more or less, over whether or not a character's warcry would be +1 more hitroll or not.

Hitroll. On a skill one most likely doesn't even have up all the time.

Somehow, the whole thing seems just that much more ludricrous to me now.

This is about whether or not Imms do things to characters that casual players will never notice, and thus not really learn from them.

How many other things can Imms do to a pfile that doesn't give an echo to a player?

I doubt there are a lot of such options, but its things like these that give players like Graatch and Hastur ammunition for their paranoia.

>This is about whether or not Imms do things to characters
>that casual players will never notice, and thus not really
>learn from them.

I agree with this, and that is why I changed it to have an echo.

>How many other things can Imms do to a pfile that doesn't give
>an echo to a player?

Very few, if any. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another reward system in the game that doesn't let you know.

>I doubt there are a lot of such options, but its things like
>these that give players like Graatch and Hastur ammunition for
>their paranoia.

As I said in another thread, the Imbessar quest suffered from bad design which leads to players sense of entitlement. People were being given roleplay rewards for an automated quest. That is the bad design. We've fixed that as well so you now get a bonus to your warcry skill % and not a bonus reserved for roleplay.

For those who are curious about the entitlement part of this...Graham makes my point perfectly on Dioxide's site: http://www.qhcf.net/cforum/char/vpost.pl?19621 Again...bad automated quest design.

>It just hit me that all this drama is, more or less, over
>whether or not a character's warcry would be +1 more hitroll
>or not.

That'd be silly if it were true. Its not really about that though, I think that's pretty obvious.

That'd be silly if it were true. Its not really about that though, I think that's pretty obvious.

You're welcome to your opinion, but if any player flipped out and started writing those kind of crazy-ass demands to the whole staff, they'd get the hammer. Doubly so if the player in question flips out fairly routinely. Lots of people have had warcries rated-- as I noted elsewhere in the thread, roughly 100 current characters presently have a non-default-strength warcry. Only one player goes bonkers once a year over it, even though a couple dozen characters have reduced warcries, and this person had a default one.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

You're likely unaware of how many complaints Phyligis's player brings up over the course of a character. Within the same day as the incident in question, he accused another player of cheating because the other player lost link (not in PK or anything) about twice during a couple hour login, once for an instant (to the MUD) and once for a minute or two. He wanted an investigation as to whether or not the other player was trying to ditch tracking NPCs, though he had no information about what NPCs or how that would work. This wasn't idle curiosity about this "rule violation"--- he pushed.

(And oh, by the way, the other player happens to be the one who killed Phyligis earlier that day. I'm sure that had nothing to do with it, unlike the mountain of other petty/false accusations of this sort from this player.)

Couple days before that, there was a pray because two characters quit together, implying a permagroup. As far as I can tell, it was at the end of a session where they grouped for XP (the only time they were so grouped)... and oh yeah, Phyligis and one of the characters had fought a bunch.

Over the years, I've answered enough of those prays to know what I'm going to get-- he's going to push hard for punishment of people over real or imaginary minutiae. He's going to belittle or ignore my judgement, tell me I'm doing my job wrong because he knows cheating is going on, try to wear me down to concede his point, then claim it's a conspiracy to get him if I don't. Probably on multiple forums.

And that's only the beginning if his character was evaluated negatively. Warcry merely average? Pile of notes. Uninducted? Forum Explosion. Loss of XP? I'm waiting for the class-action lawsuit.

You see this on the forums as well, official or otherwise. Witness all the times Graatch will demand someone else gets banned, or tell the forum's moderators how to do their job, then follow it up five minutes later or the next day with posts five times more obnoxious than the ones he wanted changed.

Now, if you do that enough, eventually the staff isn't going to keep sending you flowers. Heck, even if the staff member sucks it up nine times out of ten, most of the world will only see the one time out of ten where someone decides they're sick of his drama queen nonsense. He'll edit, selectively publish, or otherwise "make his case" like he would as a lawyer-- as one-sided as he can.

Now, Some people on various boards, will call "Friendly, polite, civilized tone" as "Boot kissing"...only with harsher words than "Boot". My advice to *ALL* players, young and old, is to ignore those people. You do *NOT* have to be Servile to be Polite. ... Try to Behave like a Gentelman(woman) would. And I have found that without exception, the response was completely reciprocal.

Yup.

There's a subset of particularly vocal players who think that the rule should be "The staff must always be exceedingly polite. I can act like a jackass all I like." It's analogous to people who go into restaurants and bully the waitstaff with unreasonable demands, using the tip or threat of calling over a manager as leverage.

The difference is, of course, that the Internet Tough Guys who brandish that attitude are ten times more obnoxious in a virtual format than they'd ever be in a restaurant. If you're going to dish out as much crap as Graatch has over the years, don't be surprised if people treat you accordingly.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

ate some free cake, got a sunburn, watched two martial arts demos, and held a cockroach. After that we went to Borders Bookstore, and while I was waiting for everyone else to finish up I read The No Asshole Rule, an excerpt of which can be found at this site.

Being argumentative, demeaning, and confrontational is a common interpersonal life strategy and can be an efficient way to get what is wanted from others, but this book points out that asshole colleagues can be detrimental to the workplace environment. Those principles apply to the CF community as well, as immortal and mortal players alike contribute to the CF corporation while serving their different functions. The No Asshole Rule suggests that if people insist on being an asshat, they should be removed lest the corporation suffer.

I am not calling anyone here an asshat, as I only know one person on CF beyond their online personas. (No, Roberto, you are not an asshole, but you should play your Playstation less and mud more.) However, people who wear the title with pride would do well to consider whether their actions serve the long-term interests of our game or merely satisfy egos and a selfish desire for pleasure at the expense of others.

Post script: I've been told that From Good to Great is a good read, and I had it in my hand but didn't purchase it. I'll have to go to Borders again next weekend.

nt

>He'll edit, selectively publish,
>or otherwise "make his case" like he would as a lawyer-- as
>one-sided as he can.

That's simply. Just post your side.
We have yet to see it.
Until then we assume that he cried because his warcry was silently nerfed down "for nothing", not because he doesn't like imms.

>There's a subset of particularly vocal players who think that
>the rule should be "The staff must always be exceedingly
>polite. I can act like a jackass all I like."

Nerfing warcry without a "polite" explanation or any explanation was a jackass action itself.
No wonder that such a pompous boy would produce symmetrical action.

After all, both sides were jackasses enough, but only one side got punished.

And a bad liar. You are the Internet Tough Guy, Valg, and you get your jollies abusing the little power you have. Terrific for you. But don't expect others to just bow down like little servants.

Here is the log in question. Note that I killed Moru, so let's not pretend it was some attempt at vengeance.

<740hp 363m 290mv 11973tnl (7.54%)> pray I suspect Moru might be dropping link to get away from mobs, repeatedly
You pray to the heavens for help!

<740hp 366m 566mv 11973tnl (7.54%)>
An Immortal tells you 'Nothing suspicious there./'

<740hp 366m 566mv 11973tnl (7.54%)> repl Happened a few times tonight, when I knew he was trying to get some equ. Figured I'd let you know to check.
You tell an Immortal 'Happened a few times tonight, when I knew he was trying to get some equ. Figured I'd let you know to check.'

<740hp 366m 602mv 11973tnl (7.54%)>
An Immortal tells you 'He's lost link rarely, and immediately reconnected. What advantage would he gain?'

<740hp 366m 616mv 11973tnl (7.54%)> repl I'm not sure what you mean by immediately, several minutes a couple times. If the mob was chasing, enough time and he'd relog and it wouldn't be chasing, eh?
You tell an Immortal 'I'm not sure what you mean by immediately, several minutes a couple times. If the mob was chasing, enough time and he'd relog and it wouldn't be chasing, eh?'

<740hp 366m 616mv 11973tnl (7.54%)> repl if not, like I said, just letting you know.
You tell an Immortal 'if not, like I said, just letting you know. '

<740hp 366m 610mv 11973tnl (7.54%)>
An Immortal tells you 'There's nothing remotely suspcious in the logs.'

<740hp 366m 616mv 11973tnl (7.54%)> repl alright
where
You tell an Immortal 'alright'

And that was the end of it. Where is this "push to punish" you speak of?

Yeah, that's waht I thought. Things had been going on between Moru and I, I saw him lose link two or three times (if you say two, so be it) and so I noted it to you. Let the staff know. Which is what the staff always says we are supposed to do. You took two minutes, told me it wasn't suspicious and voila, I said "alright." Man, I really was a jerk, wasn't it. Jerk.

p.s. I do wish little Sebby would be a mite less hypocritical though and mock you, Valgie, for your tantrum, if for no other reason than yours is one big pack of lies. But that's just fantasy.

Cheerio!

a) Dropping link won't make mobs stop tracking you (unless you're ld long enough to automatically quit out)

b) Mobs will even kill you when you're linkdead. God knows I dropped link the other day because something came up, forgot that I did it, and came back 2 hours later naked at the pit..

Kinda sucked :(

>Here is the log in question. Note that I killed Moru, so
>let's not pretend it was some attempt at vengeance.

I was on at the time, and that's exactly what I got out of the pray, for what it's worth. It just seemed like so trivial of a thing to be trying to bust on that I couldn't imagine what other motive was even possible.

None of which matters. The point in posting the log was to put paid to Valg's routine lies and deceptions about player statements and actions. No where in my tells to the immortal did I push for punishment or anything else. I even said so. He just likes to characterize anyone who criticizes him (and he deserves the criticism) as all sorts of bad things. He needs to look in a mirror. End of story.

Yup. And within 24 hours of him trying to get players called in over a permagroup that wasn't anything close to it.

Oh well. At least he promised to leave. Again.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

But to be fair, his accusation that his warcry was modified was not false was it?

I think the whole "people can be jerks" thing isn't contested.

What's contested is what the take away lessons from this warcry change was. Basically, I should monitor my warcry readings and try to ascertain whether or not my warcry is bad based on those, despite:

1) It varies with level so if you're not up on your info, you might just be wrong on whether or not it changed.

2) You cannot make the assumption that it being normal means its either bad or good - it may just have never been reviewed.

3) There are no prescribed guidelines for what is 'good' and what is 'bad', so therefore even something that may be inspiration to any individual or group/culture/etc, could be bad if a subjective imm decides they don't like it.

And, of course, you're not going to be notified if you get punished or why or how you should fix it.

That - to me - makes very little sense. The take away benefit of customizable warcries does not seem worth the #### associated with it. Its not worth wasting the imms time, its not worth frustrating the players over - frankly, its bad and it should just get removed.

I think the topic strikes a chord with the players much more than 'Graatch vs Imms'.

There's a subset of particularly vocal players who think that the rule should be "The staff must always be exceedingly polite. I can act like a jackass all I like." It's analogous to people who go into restaurants and bully the waitstaff with unreasonable demands, using the tip or threat of calling over a manager as leverage.

I think there's a particularly vocal subset of the players that believe the practices and policies of the voluntary maintainers of CF should be in the best interest of the game. I think a lot of this is based on the perceptions of yourselves that you show to us - namely that a primary goal of yours is to retain players and make this a fun party to be at.

I am a consultant, so I'm not oblivious of how difficult people can be to deal with; regardless you must expect that being in the position you are in.

Therefore, you cannot presume that a random public guest of CF will be polite to you. You also need not take unnecessary abuse. The underlying practices and policies of the administration of CF should at least account for how to deliver punishment and respond to the fallout. And if dealing with people who are angry about you punishing them is a very daunting task to you then either a change in personel or practices should be implemented to make things easier on everyone.

Sadly, I feel the way things things are carried out is counterproductive to your other goals. Example - retaining newbies. If I was a newbie and learned this is how the CF staff dealt with long time players, I might be very turned off by the process. Take that for what it is, merely an assumption that your goals are to retain players and make things fun and that they are being interfered with by inefficient standards and practices.

While the coding aspect of CF is always the most glorious, relationship management is a vital skill in any community endeavor and one that is perhaps often overlooked. Fair practices go a long way towards correcting some of the issues you guys have, even if its not the most fun thing to sit around and write up.

>And if dealing
>with people who are angry about you punishing them is a very
>daunting task to you then either a change in personel or
>practices should be implemented to make things easier on
>everyone.

Where I think we disagree is that I don't see a punishment as having taken place until the point at which I nuked the warcry skill. Yeah, his warcry got modified back to where it probably should have been. I'm sure a dozen other people got theirs reviewed and adjusted (mostly up) at the same time. I'd also be willing to bet that the person who mod'd it (not Valg or I) had no idea who the player was.

The real lesson for me, and I'll admit it wasn't one I'd learned at the time I first coded that quest, is that if you at any point give players something, they feel entitled to it. The best set of circumstances becomes normal. You see this in the way a lot of players refuse to get XP with a smaller or sub-optimal group. If we had "double XP Tuesdays", that would become the new normal and people would complain about getting half XP the rest of the week. If you can do a quest that boosts your warcry, theoretically only for a while, that boosted state becomes normal and the old normal becomes nerfed.

You can see a certain amount of reaction to this in how a lot of new skills/etc. are coded, more reflected in the work of people like Valg who are trying harder than I do to avoid pissing people off. A new skill or spell will come in erring on the side of weakness, because no one gets upset if you guess weak and have to tune it up later, but god forbid you take your best guess at game balance and need to make something weaker later.

Isn't that fairly obvious?

Lets say you get a raise at work because you're performance has been "da bomb."

Then, maybe you're having a rough couple months, family issues or something, it starts to slip...do you expect your boss to adjust your salary back down and :

1) Not let you know about it (Surprise!).
2) Not give you any indication about what you've done wrong.
3) Not give you any indication about what/how you're expected to improve.

Now, obviously, salary is far more important than someone's hitroll bonus from warcry, but the fundamental reason why the above situation would annoy you is the same fundamental reason why even minor downgrades become talking points in discussions like this.

In other words, whether you want to coin it as a bad thing or unreasonable thing or not - its a natural human reaction. Therefore yes, you probably should account for it ala being more conservative and erring on the side of weakness. I don't think that's a bad thing, I think that makes sense.

Its like, you're a consultant - would you rather be pessimistic about your timelines and get done early or optimistic and get done late? The former, because it makes more sense, even if maybe being optimistic would force you to work faster/harder. The former is practical, the latter is just paving the way to disaster.

Long story short, I don't think its about entitlement as much as it is about expectations of forthrightness when punishing someone. While, you can say "removing benefit" isn't the same as punishment, for the purposes of what I'm saying consider punishment to be any localized downgrade.

Sure, you could use some slack with with your timetable, but all decisions should be based on predictions that are as accurate as possible.

n/t

>Long story short, I don't think its about entitlement as much
>as it is about expectations of forthrightness when punishing
>someone. While, you can say "removing benefit" isn't the same
>as punishment, for the purposes of what I'm saying consider
>punishment to be any localized downgrade.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree, because there's just no way I can equate 'warcry mod returned to normal' with 'punishment'. To use your job analogy, it feels less like your salary going down and more like your medical benefits getting worse in some small way or not covering a prescription you get anymore. People bitch about it but I don't know of anyone who goes off on their boss and demands a reversal of it.

Not that I think that you're bringing this up, but I feel like there's a notion out there in some people's minds that we as a collective have it out for Graatch, and that's silly. The guy's gotten a bunch of imm-awarded stuff in the last year, including stuff with his immediately previous character. We're capable of simultaneously appreciating the cool characters he does make, and being fed up with #### like this whole debacle. I mean, if my boss talked to me the way those notes were phrased, I'd find a new job. It sure as hell isn't the way you want to talk to someone you're essentially trying to convince you to give you something.

>Sadly, I feel the way things things are carried out is
>counterproductive to your other goals. Example - retaining
>newbies. If I was a newbie and learned this is how the CF
>staff dealt with long time players, I might be very turned off
>by the process. Take that for what it is, merely an assumption
>that your goals are to retain players and make things fun and
>that they are being interfered with by inefficient standards
>and practices.

By far, the long term players do not react this way. In fact, I was quite taken aback at the way the player took this. I did not change it, but, I strongly feel that if a warcry is just so-so, then the benefit from doing something to have a special warcry should be taken away. There have been others who have lost warcry altogether for being blatantly bad or in poor taste. This warcry was nothing worthy of keeping a bonus on warcry. Nor was it bad enough to have it taken away altogether. The thing that gets me about this more than anything is the way the player decided to act in regards to it. Every once in awhile, there are a handful of long term players who just get out of line and think they deserve to be treated special because they have been here such a long time. There is no parity for a game if there is favoritism. Every character is created the same way and it is up to the player, not the imms, to make your character special. If you think that others are going to see your warcry as weak, why should it stay strong? And, if others don't think your warcry is special, why should that player expect to have it strong? I did a quest, therefore I should have it? Bleh.

The underlying practices and policies of the administration of CF should at least account for how to deliver punishment and respond to the fallout.

They do.

While the coding aspect of CF is always the most glorious, relationship management is a vital skill in any community endeavor and one that is perhaps often overlooked. Fair practices go a long way towards correcting some of the issues you guys have, even if its not the most fun thing to sit around and write up.

We have them.

We have separate forums and internal helpfiles specifically for this purpose. Years of precedent are available, and the senior staff can tell you what's 'normal' for a given violation if you can't find the helpfile. Unusual circumstances are usually handled by a pow-wow of available staff, and staff routinely kick things up to IMPs if it's a problem they can't handle or don't know what to do with. Staff are aware that their actions get logged and reviewed. Negligent use of immpowers gets noted and can lead to repercussions. Conversely, I'm trying to remember to single people out when they regularly catch cheating through good detective work. (Eshval being a recent example of someone who keeps his eyes especially peeled in order to keep the game fair. Yay, Eshval.)

Even subjective judgements (e.g. "How many XP should I give for this role?") have guidelines attached. Does the role tell me something useful about the character? Would you enter it in a role contest? Would it win? Give them roughly X.

(Side note, along the lines of the observation that 3 times as many warcries get strengthened vs. weakened, those role guidelines were put in because of a concern that the XP bumps were spiralling upwards over time-- we had been encouraging small bumps, and rather suddenly we were commonly seeing bonuses on a scale we like to use for dynamic RP, but not so much for roles unless they're really whip-ass. The staff leans reward-happy over punishment-happy by a large-margin.)

Graatch flipped out over having a warcry that was merely average. It worked exactly as it did back when everyone had the same generic line of text as a warcry. He appealed the (non-)decision, got an answer, then rapidly got abusive, at which point it got kicked upstairs and that's when punishment came down in the form of the lost skill. There's precedent for this, which Graatch knows about because he was one of the first people to get it, roughly a year ago in an eerily identical incident. Given a player who has been denied/slain/etc. countless times before (over a long time... the .mp3 about his famous outbursts is from 1998 or so if memory serves) for exactly this sort of tantrums, I think a single lost skill is more than reasonable.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Well, I'm not here to say that Graatch was reasonable in his reaction, because that's not something that anyone can do anything about short of banning Graatch. I think its sorta fruitless to talk about per player solutions - due to the nature of them only applying to the player you're talking about.

I'll by no means disagree that "People can be jerks(tm)," and restating the obvious won't get us anywhere.

In practice, punishment is subjective (to some degree it has to be, in other degrees it does not). A simple way to avoid situations like this would be to have a generic outline in the form of criteria list :

1) Role relevent
2) Avoids verbosity
3) Coherent
4) Inspires

Now, those are the basic criteria you'd say makes a good warcry. When you downgrade someone or adjust, you could simply:

Note to : Player
Note subject: Warcry Adjusted

Your warcry was penalized for failing item 1 on the criteria. If you adjust it, we may change our decision later accordingly. We will not justify or argue about the subject.

Sincerely,
The Immortal Staff.

Now, at this juncture, someone could refute it or give you a huge argument and you'd be free to just ignore them. You've constructively criticized their RP, pointed out a method of resolving the issue and pointed out the punishment. All in one fell swoop.

Personally, I'm just choosing warcry as an example, feel free to replace it with: Request, Alignment, Ethos, Eye color, whatever.

The point is that you're not required to argue about it but you've given them a take-away lesson for the punishment. They know what they did wrong, they don't feel like you're being sneaky or underhanded, etc. Some particularly unreasonable sorts will still have a bad reaction, but the vast majority of reasonable people will not.

I don't like the idea of going ooc for an ic incident. This happened to his character for something that his character was doing as part of his rp. He didn't rp it out. He became abusive. You can't put all situations in one box and come out with the same mix for each instance. The fact that it was Graatch was disappointing to a point because he had really been stepping it up a few notches lately. The help files are updated all the time. Vets should not be having these problems, nor should they be causing them either.

As for talking about a dwindling playerbase. Let's take a look at that for a moment. Do you think a vet whose warcry has to do with "What's Mine is Mine and What's Yours is Mine" encourages a newbie with crap gear when that vet just kills, loots/sacs his stuff? Does that sound like a warcry that instills courage or hope or does it sound like a 3 year old who wants his lollipop and yours too?

Each situation is different and is dealt with differently. We deal with the situation first before finding out who the core of the situation is. There are way too many other things to do then to worry about who is playing who.

>I don't like the idea of going ooc for an ic incident. This
>happened to his character for something that his character was
>doing as part of his rp.

If he wasn't notified, how was he supposed to know it happened? Because he's Graatch, he knows what his hitroll and svs would be with the quest. I would never have any idea unless it were obviously very low (Like 1 hitroll and 2 svs at hero). There should be some notification, even if it is IC. Maybe a room echo or some such.

Incidentally, I also am sad to see that graatch is apparently regressing after having played a series of solid character. What never ceases to amaze me is how people get furious if the staff is ever a little bit testy, but then fly completely off the handle themselves.

>If he wasn't notified, how was he supposed to know it
>happened? Because he's Graatch, he knows what his hitroll and
>svs would be with the quest. I would never have any idea
>unless it were obviously very low (Like 1 hitroll and 2 svs at
>hero). There should be some notification, even if it is IC.
>Maybe a room echo or some such.

This is no longer an issue, so can we please stop bringing it up? Consider the addition of an echo to be an admission of wrong doing from the Immstaff if it helps, but obviously they agree that some notification is warranted.

I missed the post about the change you're referencing.

>I don't like the idea of going ooc for an ic incident. This
>happened to his character for something that his character was
>doing as part of his rp. He didn't rp it out.

To be honest I view this as a mechanics issue - inherently OOC already. My character really shouldn't be able to tell how inspired I am by my warcry. I'm not sure if that makes sense. Namely if you were to make impale do more -str and less bleeding, we'd have to play along in game like that's how its always been. Mechanical changes are OOC concepts inherently, my char has to feign ignorance over tweaking and such. I can't announce one day, "Geez, my warcry seems dreadfully uninspiring these days, let me rework it." That'd be totally out of character, just like a bad description or bad racial/ethos/alignment roleplay. Its a nebulous topic, so I'm not sure if I'm explaining my thoughts well.

>He became abusive. You can't put all situations in one box and come out
>with the same mix for each instance. The fact that it was
>Graatch was disappointing to a point because he had really
>been stepping it up a few notches lately. The help files are
>updated all the time. Vets should not be having these
>problems, nor should they be causing them either.

I'm not saying he didn't; I'm addressing the policy. Tomorrow we'll all be talking about some other player, some other character, some other punishment, etc. Debating one instance seems pretty damn pointless, especially when in my opinion there's things that can be done better with the policy which would curtail 90% of the nonsense.

>As for talking about a dwindling playerbase. Let's take a
>look at that for a moment. Do you think a vet whose warcry
>has to do with "What's Mine is Mine and What's Yours is Mine"
>encourages a newbie with crap gear when that vet just kills,
>loots/sacs his stuff?

To be fair, the system allows it. You guys could fix that or put in an incentive/disincentive system to marginalize it. Am I defending Graatch? No, but the world is full of Graatches. Its sorta like - it'd be a bad idea to hand out handguns on the street. Sure, you could reason with people and try to weed out the bad apples and talk sense to them. A better choice is to not give them the means to cause problems to begin with or at least try to isolate the damage.

>Does that sound like a warcry that
>instills courage or hope or does it sound like a 3 year old
>who wants his lollipop and yours too?
>
>Each situation is different and is dealt with differently. We
>deal with the situation first before finding out who the core
>of the situation is. There are way too many other things to
>do then to worry about who is playing who.

There's a reason why most sports don't work that way. Subjectivity and competition are just a bad combination. And while CF isn't a sport, it certainly is incredibly competitive. Its one of CF's hugest selling points, but with it comes the (mis)conception of fairness. Fairness to some degree simply cannot exist when the rules aren't clearly and publically defined.

>>I don't like the idea of going ooc for an ic incident.
>This
>>happened to his character for something that his character
>was
>>doing as part of his rp. He didn't rp it out.
>
>To be honest I view this as a mechanics issue - inherently OOC
>already. My character really shouldn't be able to tell how
>inspired I am by my warcry. I'm not sure if that makes sense.
>Namely if you were to make impale do more -str and less
>bleeding, we'd have to play along in game like that's how its
>always been. Mechanical changes are OOC concepts inherently,
>my char has to feign ignorance over tweaking and such. I
>can't announce one day, "Geez, my warcry seems dreadfully
>uninspiring these days, let me rework it." That'd be totally
>out of character, just like a bad description or bad
>racial/ethos/alignment roleplay. Its a nebulous topic, so I'm
>not sure if I'm explaining my thoughts well.
>
You can rp that you aren't hitting as often.

>>He became abusive. You can't put all situations in one box
>and come out
>>with the same mix for each instance. The fact that it was
>>Graatch was disappointing to a point because he had really
>>been stepping it up a few notches lately. The help files
>are
>>updated all the time. Vets should not be having these
>>problems, nor should they be causing them either.
>
>I'm not saying he didn't; I'm addressing the policy. Tomorrow
>we'll all be talking about some other player, some other
>character, some other punishment, etc. Debating one instance
>seems pretty damn pointless, especially when in my opinion
>there's things that can be done better with the policy which
>would curtail 90% of the nonsense.
I wouldn't say it would come even close to 90%. It wouldn't even curtail 10%. Some people make a mistake once from ignorance and don't do it again. There are others who do it every so often and then there are those who are cronic. You have to take each instance case by case and the rules cover what not to do and what the punishment will be if you do break them.
>
>>As for talking about a dwindling playerbase. Let's take a
>>look at that for a moment. Do you think a vet whose warcry
>>has to do with "What's Mine is Mine and What's Yours is
>Mine"
>>encourages a newbie with crap gear when that vet just kills,
>>loots/sacs his stuff?
>
>To be fair, the system allows it. You guys could fix that or
>put in an incentive/disincentive system to marginalize it. Am
>I defending Graatch? No, but the world is full of Graatches.
>Its sorta like - it'd be a bad idea to hand out handguns on
>the street. Sure, you could reason with people and try to
>weed out the bad apples and talk sense to them. A better
>choice is to not give them the means to cause problems to
>begin with or at least try to isolate the damage.
>
The system does allow it to be done, yes. Does it reward those who go about shouting it for a warcry? No. It was found to be mediocre at best, so he had his warcry adjusted to show that he didn't learn enough from the quest from a rp standpoint.
>>Does that sound like a warcry that
>>instills courage or hope or does it sound like a 3 year old
>>who wants his lollipop and yours too?
>>
>>Each situation is different and is dealt with differently.
>We
>>deal with the situation first before finding out who the
>core
>>of the situation is. There are way too many other things to
>>do then to worry about who is playing who.
>
>There's a reason why most sports don't work that way.
>Subjectivity and competition are just a bad combination. And
>while CF isn't a sport, it certainly is incredibly
>competitive. Its one of CF's hugest selling points, but with
>it comes the (mis)conception of fairness. Fairness to some
>degree simply cannot exist when the rules aren't clearly and
>publically defined.
The rules are defined, the punishments are not. They can't be. It depends on the rule. Do you give the same punishment to a guy for jaywalking that you would for homicide? They both broke the rules. You want to streamline opinions and that can't happen.

Heh, you sorta ignored my post, which is fine.

The rules are defined, the punishments are not. They can't be. It depends on the rule. Do you give the same punishment to a guy for jaywalking that you would for homicide? They both broke the rules. You want to streamline opinions and that can't happen.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't really think the rules are defined well or equally applied.

Thankfully, someone resurrected the toilet paper joke during my time but even if they hadn't - I could still understand it all. 98?! That's 9 years ago and nothings changed :D

I laughed myself pantsless at that song. Thanks Scar, a masterpiece.

Edit: Is it okay if I post the link? This is something even some of the newbies could get inta!

Yhorian

Vlad posted it on the Battlefields forum in Phyligis' death thread.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=4&topic_id=57537&mesg_id=57554&page=

From you:

>Given a player who has been
denied/slain/etc. countless times before (over a long time...
the .mp3 about his famous outbursts is from 1998 or so if
memory serves) for exactly this sort of tantrums, I think a
single lost skill is more than reasonable.

From Graatch:

>The facts are the facts, and no, I haven't been slain/denied by the staff. Just hasn't happened, because.. gasp... I don't cheat or do things against the rules that would get me slain or denied.

Who's not tellin' the truth?

Dio's archives either don't go back quite far enough, or the incident I first thought of got cut.

The biggest of his many tantrum incidents was his "The Truth" website, which was basically the TLB of its day, and was part of the reason for things like the song, changed our criteria for who can be a heroimm, etc. It was the first of many crusades to free the playerbase from the oppressive grip of whatever it was that was oppressively gripping them in Graatch's mind. Someone older than I can give you more details (hopefully on the Conspiracy thread and not cluttering this board more), but suffice to say more than a few rules got broken there.

(By the way, type 'Graatch' into Dioxide's 1999 search to see how he handled being a VIP, relative to his current behavior. I was trying to locate the "Truth" incident and found that distracting.)

Anyway, after 10+ years of drama, I don't think Graatch will be eligible for the next billion rounds of forum amnesty. I'll go free up someone else to keep the list small. =)

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I haven't read the log in question, but I totally agree with this.

I had nothing to do with anything here, but I would've acted the same way as the rest of our staff. If you're going to act like a bitch, I'm going to #### you like a bitch.