I noticed for quite some time now that if I log into CF for only a short time I get a rather hefty morale penalty.
Till today I thought this was only something small but now I noticed that my morale drops down to "Panicked" for at least 24 hours. I don't know how all the condition are named or what effect they have but "panicked" sound rather bad...

Is this form of punishment really necessary?

There could be many reasons to have your morale reach the panicked state. I don't know the reasons for your character reaching it, but, if you think it was just from short logins, you would have to be a multiple repeat offender. Morale penalties stack and a quick login/logout isn't going to affect you much. Panicked is a stacked morale problem.

>but, if you think it was just from short logins,
>you would have to be a multiple repeat offender. Morale
>penalties stack and a quick login/logout isn't going to affect
>you much. Panicked is a stacked morale problem.

"multiple repeat offender" in the way of multiple short login/logouts in a row or number of applied login penaltys over the characters lifespan? The first one certainly doesnt apply but the second one might be true because I noticed it quite a few times. Mostly because my playing times suffer large gaps between days of high activity (like 12+ hours in two or 3 days followed by a 2-3 week break) and I like to check my notes or add to my role in between.
It was the first time I noticed the "panicked" state so it might not be the sole reason for my morale (will check it again though) but after a quick search within my logs I found 3 occurences where i moved from
"morale: secure" -> logout -> short login -> logout -> login -> "morale: distressed"
just for reading my notes in two cases and adding to my role in another.

The guy with 50 quick login/logout occurrences over the same amount of time as a guy with 5 are going to have quite a different morale experience.

Occurrences vary, but, if I see someone with 30 or more and I see they are doing it at "lame" times and can document it, I will realm them. Mind you, that is me. Other immortals might have different ways of dealing with it.

If I recall correctly, it's in there to punish characters that log in to scout for other characters, or characters that log in and don't like the odds they see, so log right out.

So, to answer your question...yes. And unless you can tell me a legit, IC reason to repeatedly log on for very, very short periods of time before logging out, I don't see it changing.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

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Would it be possible to just limit this mechanic to characters that actually use "who" or "who pk" within that time frame? Some additional echo (preferable with some flavor text not just an ooc message) when this penalty applies would be helpful too, so people at least know how it happened and why it happened.

I've had some short login sessions where I was like, "Oh ####, I never sent that note." Or where i just wanted to pop on and put in a role update or something of the like. Don't know if that happens with enough frequency to be of any concern, but maybe limiting the penalty to those that use the who or whopk command is a good idea.

Sometimes you log on after going out or a party and realize you are to F'd up to play.

As long as you don't do that a lot you don't have anything to worry about.

I'll assume you don't do that a lot. ;) No, don't tell me!

I have an uncaballed character with no armor that I keep around because I like the character and don't want to roll one from scratch, but I don't really play it. I pretty much just log in/log out once every 2-3 weeks to make sure it doesn't auto.

Does this mean when I do play the character again its going to be totally gimped?