I love this game, it rocks and it's been my pastime for 10 years now and I've loved every minute of it, but we just have to admit people are moving on.

This game was unrivaled because WoW and things of that nature didn't exist, and there were always groups for ranking (granted there were more group v group fight for ranking areas but that was fun). But CF is slowly dwindling on players and with the recent crash people have really been teetering one whether to come back and play or not.

The main reason I feel is that ranking feels like a chore, and it is timely, and I just figured I'd ask if maybe we can tweak it. I'm not saying roll a character and be hero POS style "outfit" and rock out. But with so many fewer players, and newbies needing to learn hero range... I don't see how a 30-50% ranking bonus would hurt us... and it was help us infinatly.

It wouldn't hurt the game in any way mechanically and it would let people get to where they would like to sit much better, creating a more rich and fuller game for the people that are wanting to move on to games with less learning curves and more bang for thier buck (aka time).

I just wanted to propose it and see what you IMM's had to say, or how you feel about it. Thanks.

-Guilo

Have fun though everyone.

But thanks for giving it a shot, man!

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

*** Email me your testimonials or two-line blurbs. Help our marketing efforts! ***

Maybe I'm still not "cut out for it" but I think I kept a newbie playing where he would have otherwise deleted, I figure that might mean I still have a purpose here. Hehe. If nothing else I have always been a reasonable source of gear for my enemies. As I just put on a death notice I'm looking at it like I'm new to a mud that is just really similar to one I have played before, but keeping the "I'm a newb" mentality. Besides I can't quit quit, I promised nep a long time ago that I was gonna play every clas/race combo to hero just to have done it. :) I thought I had deleted the file where I was keeping track and ran across it on a cd, took it as a sign. Rolled one up.
I'm going to go at it with a different attitude this time.

Always love to have you around, Nimmers!

I actually have the time to make an attempt to come back, my god has the game grown. This is a good thing obviously, although I feel like Ill be a newbie. Hope to see you in the fields!

I'll second this to first killings of that particular mob. The bonus could be there, so that when you kill that particular mob for the first time (or if that mob is numerous, maybe some of them), you get the xp bonus in form of increased xp. Otherwise, the xp gains would be normal.

Preface: This isn't a commentary on the idea's merit.

But it did make me a wee bit nostalgic. I remember back in the day, there'd be a crash, then when it came up EVERYONE would run to a few places to see if various eq was in (wide coppers, spiked collars, etc.)

I was just imagining post-crash everyone running to the various leveling spots to make sure they got that extra xp.

That, in turn, reminds me of the way Ishmael would emote:

Ishmael gives you a wide copper bracelet.

Of my sphere Beauty druid who, at level 12, prayed, "Paisley Giant, I wish to be an Entropist."

Then saw:

Ishmael uncloaks his presence.

Ishmael says, "Okay."

You have been inducted into Entropy!

Ishmael cloaks his presence and disappears.

Looks like one of my initial empowerment sessions.

Oh, jeez...

That reminds me of the time I deleted my level 12 entropy a-p, rerolled with the same name as a thief and got inducted at level 3.

Awesome.

As that xp should be one time deal only, like exploration xp. Once you've killed that particular mob and gotten the extra exp, the same mob wouldn't give you extra xp any more. So, you'd explore fighting the mob and take the risk of the mob being tough one, and would get rewarded for daring to try instead of killing same mob over and over. The motivation of this idea is due to traditional powerranking being so much more effective way of gathering xp than exploring. I think that this would help by taking in account the killing part of exploring better. This could be true for all mobs, or certain more challenging mobs only, but the basic idea was to reward daring to fight the unknown and to empower ways of ranking that aren't based on repeatedly grindkilling one area again and again.

No idea how hard it'd be to code (I know, I always say that), but I liken this to exploration/observation xp, except there's more to it than run in, look at the mob, flee.

Some of the absolute best and most fun leveling I've ever done was as Droba and Hunsobo, being drug around by a group of 1 or 2 others who were heroes and eq hunting. I think I leveled Hunsobo from 47 to 48 via Draktel. I'd made some progress already via spirits or something, then we killed all the dragons in dragon tower (2500 xp for Tiamat was teh hawtness), then the Dracolich (I think that was like 3000 xp), then a bunch of Dire wolves (and then the head dire wolf) and then I think the Crimson Dragon or something.

And then the bashing began (took Enigma at 44, Greeting at 48).

>I love this game, it rocks and it's been my pastime for 10
>years now and I've loved every minute of it, but we just have
>to admit people are moving on.
>
>This game was unrivaled because WoW and things of that nature
>didn't exist, and there were always groups for ranking
>(granted there were more group v group fight for ranking areas
>but that was fun). But CF is slowly dwindling on players and
>with the recent crash people have really been teetering one
>whether to come back and play or not.


I am new here, but I am disagreeable with your comment about WoW. I've been "new" to muds for um quite a few years now. Probably as long as you've been here, because I never really found one that was any good. Yet I have experience roleplaying and that is one thing that really forces me to try to find a good RP mud. I played UO since its conception, and I've tried probably most of the MMO games out there, and they honestly do not have much against the mud world.

Yeah, I am sure people are trying WoW, but WoW is a cartoon, with no RP, an endless grind, with arguably poor PvP. Then there is TR which has very little PvP, RP, and a slightly less annoying grind than most. People try out these new games and end up going back to the ones they play before; because they have been tried and tested. There are still UO Roleplay shards out there, and they have just as many players as they did previous. It's pretty much the same admins and GMs, and the game is free. That is important.

So, with all intricate things aside, such as your problems finding groups, I do not think any real mud gamer would actually leave for a game like WoW. I find that very hard to believe and if you do, good riddance. no offense intended.

That said there are a few things that do make people leave for good. These are things that people start up the mod with their favorite client, check out the mud, and log out immediately. I went into lusternia and achaea to check on my old characters and there is pretty much no noobs there at all, and even less high level characters than there was before. They won't get those people back and every one of us here knows why. I do not feel that this server is in that position.

And if it is, then it turns around starting today, +1 noob; me.

welcome aboard.

I have three friends that I used to play CF with that now spend their CF time playing Eve, one who gave it up for WoW, and plenty more that just plain got ticked off at something (usually out of game) about the MUD and never returned.

I don't think it's that other games draw away from CF, I think that CF repels some people who end up playing other games.

Raising the amount of xp per kill won't bring back the vets. The vets left because of other issues, completely unrelated to XP. I'm not going to launch into some tirade about WHY so many of the core group of players that kept the game going for so long have decided to move on, but I can assure you it had nothing at all to do with XP, so the change you suggest won't bring any vets back. Anyone I would consider a vet would have played in a time when there was no cap on XP penalties from mob death, and many had to level up after being gotten into a 30-50k (or more) xp hole.

All the xp change you propose would do is help you level up faster, and encourage more high level throw away characters. Not a good idea IMHO.

I think this may be the first time I've ever agreed with Vlad!

The "vet-leakage" has not been due to any gameplay issues. It has more to do with player/staff relations. It's obvious when someone vocal leaves, and it's easy to say "good riddance." I'm not sure the CF administration has any idea how many solid people leave CF silently. Frustrated, upset, jaded - but not vocal.

Then you have a large number of people who have quit, but are still playing. They aren't interested in playing a decent, memorable character. They just go through the mud taking whatever they can, RPing the absolute minimum and deleting at the first hint of trouble.

If you want to save CF the answer is not in retrieving old players. It is certainly in acquiring new addicts. Sadly, I don't see any effort to do either.

>If you want to save CF the answer is not in retrieving old
>players. It is certainly in acquiring new addicts. Sadly, I
>don't see any effort to do either.

What can I say? Our marketing efforts have long been plagued by folks who like to talk about marketing or are interested in marketing CF, but (sometimes due to circumstances beyond their control) fall short when it comes to actually doing something.

You guys need a person who can actually make decisions about marketing related things. My experience in dealing with CF marketing is that "ya'll" don't have a staff member at a high enough level to implement anything. There are lots of great ideas, lots of willing volunteers, lots of people willing to donate $$ to the cause -- no one to organize them.

That would be phase1 of any marketing plan as I see it. :)
Find chief - organize Indian.

Less talking, more doing! :)

asdf

I sent a surfeit of marketing through Kastellyn that I never saw come to fruition, man.

No point in spending a lot of time and energy trying to propitiate the CF marketing gods when all the work is for naught.

(No offense to my main-man Kasty now)

>You guys need a person who can actually make decisions about
>marketing related things.

There are plenty of people who can "make decisions". What CF needs is people who can and will actually do something.

Mostly the acidic arguments that take place on dios that ended up eating into my in game enjoyment. One of those times was actually due to Vlad during the "Naref debacle" where ic actions got dragged into an argument on the boards. I think in this situation we tend to be our own worst enemies in driving people away.

Sometimes certain players (or former players) get so negative and overwhelming that I can't be bothered to play anymore for a few months or a year or so.

And then other times the playerbase is so fun and entertaining that I'm compelled to roll another.

But yeah, the OOC boards have a significant impact.

Sometimes I sound way more venomous than I intend to. It's not really hostility, just a complete lack of tact. I just say what I think sometimes, without taking the time to properly mull it over in my head first. When I'm being critical, it's 99% of the time with the intention of just giving someone an honest, if harsh, critique.

I seldom actually set out to piss anyone off, and I apologize for getting into that whole thing with you.

n/t

>Raising the amount of xp per kill won't bring back the vets.
>The vets left because of other issues, completely unrelated to
>XP. <...>

Still not sure I can agree. Life has moved on in so many ways that I have less time for CF than I did 10 years ago. I still greatly enjoy the game. But if a former vet has less time but still has the itch then reducing the chore of ranking effectively lengthens that time. Put another way, if someone told me that I could change my effective 3 CF hours per week into 6 hours per week then I'd take a long look. I'd love to play more and have more effective time. And, as has been said before, with signature skills coming in in the middle ranks (specializations, terrain skills, major spells. etc.) I'd welcome a means that would make this happen faster. Again, I'd don't need to spam kill trolls to get to where I've been so many time before. Just speed it up a bit. Why don't people see this?

In my opinion, the game is near unrecognizable to someone that hasn't consistently played for the past 2 years or more. I remember I took a 1 year hiatus after Gryshilniar and came back and felt utterly lost and noobish and still haven't acclimated myself to the new game that is CF. Part of that is why I'm not playing very much if at all right now.

Regardless, I don't think the XP has anything to do with the vets leaving. The game has progressed (as is the intention of the IMM staff) and it favors a different type of player now (a new breed per se) so I think rather than bringing back the vets you guys should perhaps try to bring in new players who don't remember CF as a different game but instead have an open mind unlike people like me and won't complain when things appear to have been changed for the worse.

You know, I like you Vlad - have since we were playing together in 1994.

I think ultimately the reason that most players left though, is that they didn't have time anymore.

Chris Wallace once said that mudding is something best done a lot, or not at all, and I've always agreed with that.

I hope the day comes again soon that I have the time to play CF once again. Maybe I can atone for my last character who royally sucked #### in spite of some super kind imm loving.

T

Awarding vets who really make a difference to the hero level of the game, how about allowing a character that earns their way into a particular class to come back again at insta-level 40 once at a later date as the same class?

That way, say you earn several of these, you can bypass a lot of the crap of early ranking and get into hero-level play. Maybe they were a good character, but the player behind the character felt they'd do some things different.

It could give me incentive to do a better job with my currents if I had the prospects of having a class do-over at a later date.

I know I recently rolled up a lowbie warrior to literally go through the Area List beginning with areas marked 1-10 and explored them all.

I gotta say I've had a blast doing that, found some items I had seen but didn't know existed, finished some quests I had always been confused about, found some decent lowbie preps, etc.

The key here is expectation. If you expect the 1-30 levels to be a grind, then they more than likely will be. If you expect them to be time you can spend exploring, getting your OBS and commerce skills, and learning some backstory to some of the newer areas, I believe you'll have more fun.

The key word in my rambling is EXPECTATION.

sd

Would it be possible to create a more balanced mid level game where one may not NEED to get to hero to have the full CF experience?

I personally enjoy the mid levels almost as much as Hero level.

The only time I find it compulsory to power through to hero is once I hit level 42 or so.. That's when you start getting into the range of hero mages and bards and communers- who you'll have very little chance of saving against, despite divine saves.

One thing I can think of to alleviate this is to drastically reduce the effect of lvl difference factoring into saves. Particularly spells like neuro where a level 51 transmuter casting it on a level 42 is literally a death sentence. But the same thing goes for other spells/songs/communes. Just a thought.

>Would it be possible to create a more balanced mid level game
>where one may not NEED to get to hero to have the full CF
>experience?

I think we have. :)

I've seen lowbie/midbie murder bards, transmuters, invokers, and shifters all successful by any reasonable standard. Including those where I had no idea who the player was, i.e., not me or any of power players with easy tells.

I don't know, what don't you think can reasonably hang?

I'm not think solely of PK. Rather that my 30th level non melee class might have a bit of trouble doing things that are contingent upon killing mobs. For example, regearing a 30th level invoker is more difficult than regearing a warrior of the same rank. Same for the re-raid...

I think though, more to the point, that eventually distension and a general dislike of "level sitters" rules out the genuine quality character who remains at level 30.

>I'm not think solely of PK. Rather that my 30th level non
>melee class might have a bit of trouble doing things that are
>contingent upon killing mobs. For example, regearing a 30th
>level invoker is more difficult than regearing a warrior of
>the same rank. Same for the re-raid...

See, I go the opposite way. A naked invoker is ready to contribute to a group, if he can find one and wants one. An invoker with a weapon to parry with is ready to PK. :)

I think it's a lot harder for a warrior with the same standard of gear.

Honestly, I think it might just seem easier to you because you've played a lot more midlevel warriors than midlevel invokers.

Solo reraid I can admit is easier for some characters than others, especially in the 20s. (This doesn't necessarily go purely on class lines; a good tank warrior can do it a lot easier than a nontank warrior). By the 30s pretty much everyone should be able to do it.

>I think though, more to the point, that eventually distension
>and a general dislike of "level sitters" rules out the genuine
>quality character who remains at level 30.

Well, yeah, distention will eventually kick in there... but I really feel like you have to actively try not to level to get to that point. Unless you mobdie a lot for some reason, sooner or later all the incidental XP you accrue will level you without ever trying or exploring anything. This has happened to me in let's say less than 10 hours of play more than a few times.

>>I'm not think solely of PK. Rather that my 30th level non
>>melee class might have a bit of trouble doing things that
>are
>>contingent upon killing mobs. For example, regearing a 30th
>>level invoker is more difficult than regearing a warrior of
>>the same rank. Same for the re-raid...
>
>See, I go the opposite way. A naked invoker is ready to
>contribute to a group, if he can find one and wants one. An
>invoker with a weapon to parry with is ready to PK. :)

I admit my mid-level invoker experience is limited, but not completely absent. It seems to me with out the benefit of full a/b/s something has to be done in terms of the limited hit poins and this usually requires some gear. Whereas a 30th level warrior may have a few more finesse tricks up their sleeves + lag.

I agree they are ready to contribute to a group, but remember we're talking about a non-grouping level 30 invoker. The purpose of which would be to PK and RP.

In my experience non-levelling characters tend to get kicked out of their cabals, and certainly are poorly positioned in say, Empire.

For the purpose of discussion, what is the downside to having a majority of your skills at level 30? That way the gameplay is near identical, with the exception of the p v mob aspect?

A boost to experience would:
- require a boost in skill learning rates (who wants to be a hero duergar with sword at 80 while the elves have mastered their defenses for the last 30 levels)
- make it far easier to cabal hop
- make it easier to have multiple characters to facilitate hopping
- encourage shallow character development, for who wants to write roles for a character who might not pan out
- increase the likelihood of a rage delete
- limit the opportunities for the immortal staff to get to know character, which is essential for communers, followers, cabal management, and random awards

Most of the improvements I've heard are narcissistic; it is easy to say that we want to limit the needs for prepping, but some classes/characters will never be defeated if they cannot be caught unprepped.

A similar statement could be made about gear: we want pimp equipment, but we don't want our enemies to have similar gear. Like preps, not every character has the same knowledge base to draw from nor the same access due to role, build, and allies. Those who benefit from this situation are more inclined to say things are wonderful, and those outside that circle are pk wins...unless it is easy for them to recreate and jump on the bandwagon.

I'm not necessarily opposed to changes in the game, but I don't see this as actually fixing any problem.

The way I see it, there's a change that might help keep players around.

I'll say what they are first, then the caveat will reveal itself:

1) Significantly extend or remove age death and make con death significantly harder or eliminate it.
2) Introduce higher quality unlimited gear, make limited gear more rare or eliminating some.
3) Reduce preps, make hard to train skills that replace some preps.
4) Round off characters a bit better, IE, make orcs tank a little better but not quite as offensive or something like that.

Basic idea is to allow for higher longevity but lower time commitment characters. The problem is obviously the ones that there have always been with those systems - namely chars seem to hang around forever, death isn't as meaningful, etc. I tend to think that as the CF playerbase ages it begins to make sense to reduce the time commitment requirements and the concept of "wasted time" becomes much more pointed.

It is a trade off however but might be worth pondering. I feel like if CF was a game that :

A) Didn't have such low standards for requiring a re-roll.
B) Didn't require as much activity to maintain a character.

With those it might be more appealing to people who just can't play that often or in the near future may have significantly dampened playing time. Rounding out characters reduces the likelihood of choosing an "incredibly bad" combo. If you can hero a character and not feel like the char is ruined by not playing for a month then you start to fit the model of what older players need. Likewise for when you hero a character only to find that the character is worthless at certain things (like tanking or exploring or whatever), theres an abundant feeling like you wasted your time.

>1) Significantly extend or remove age death and make con death
>significantly harder or eliminate it.

Really not a lot of characters go to either of these. Probably less than 1% of decently high level characters if that. Do you really think it's that much of a problem? If so, how? I don't want to be dismissive but I just don't see the angle here.

>2) Introduce higher quality unlimited gear, make limited gear
>more rare or eliminating some.

This is something I struggle with personally as a player.

On one hand, when I'm playing enough, I really hate when a lot of the limited gear I want is on people who don't play.

On the other hand, when I'm not playing very much, it's frustrating to log on and have like three pieces of gear. I think it's fair, but at the same time it's not very fun for me.

I'm not sure what a good compromise or solution is here, but I see the issue.

>3) Reduce preps, make hard to train skills that replace some
>preps.

Reduce in what way? I'm just curious as to what your whole solution looks like here.

>Really not a lot of characters go to either of these.
>Probably less than 1% of decently high level characters if
>that. Do you really think it's that much of a problem? If
>so, how? I don't want to be dismissive but I just don't see
>the angle here.

Just a guess, but maybe he wants to give people who really hate ranking the ability to play their characters longer and thus avoid having to rank up a new one. Though, as you said, not that many characters age die anyway.

>Reduce in what way? I'm just curious as to what your whole
>solution looks like here.

I think he's trying to get out of the "time = advantage" equation. Currently if you spend enough time gathering preps, you have an advantage (in a given fight) against someone not willing to make that effort. But because of the way some people are, they will always make that effort. It may even make the game less enjoyable for them, but if the advantage is there to be had...they'll have to go grab it, even if it means a lot of un-fun time.

One solution, then, would be to remove preps that have a high "effort to reward" ratio. Take aura/shield in potion form as an example. I don't often keep these on hand with my melee classes because it's just too much of a pain. Same for stoneskin to a lesser degree. So maybe get rid of aura/shield in potion form altogether. Then nobody would be *able* to spend the extra effort to keep them on hand. That frees up that guy's time, but also makes it a little more fair for him when he has to fight people who weren't gathering aura/shield to begin with.

That's just one small example. The general idea would be to keep some preps in the game, but make them relatively un-time-intensive to gather (though not trivial). That way the "fully prepped" guy isn't drastically better off than the "not fully prepped" guy.

Honestly, I don't see dam redux as that big of a deal. If you're just trashing someone, adding on dam redux isn't going to win you a fight you weren't already going to win. Where it comes in handy are raid situations, or when you face another buff/decked type guy. Or, alternately, when you face a combo that yours matches up very poorly against.

#2 is the most important, the rest just sorta support that. Do a lot of people con-die right now? No. Why do people delete chars if they can't be incredibly active? Basically because their gear goes away. That's really the major bottleneck. I probably should've ordered it in a more intelligent way. Con death removal/weakening just takes some of the sting out of exploration, making it more viable to do at hero. When I'm at hero I usually save con for PK, because even though you can get down to three in order to not be equivalently "vuln-rot" you need to maintain somewhere above 10 or carry a stack of +con gear on you.

In terms of reducing preps, I think of a mage for instance. I have tons of mage roles I'd like to play but I can't play a mage. Reason why is that the logging in with three pieces of gear applies to wands too. And I don't really feel like mages need aura, barrier and shield - but I do feel they need either aura + shield or barrier. So instead of having them be a prep I'd make them really hard to train skills that do damage reduction in correlation to skill percentage. This way, it benefits from longevity and reduces the amount of surface area that gets hit by hording code. The general idea is to make a character viable if you log out for say, 3 weeks. Maybe not on a Hunsobo level but at least on a *functional* level, where I don't feel like I need to reinvent the wheel every time I log in just to get into a state where I can play. I also think this could apply to "trip protection" (fly without actually flying) on warrior types and things like that, where the benefit is commensurate to basically age and benefits don't stack with preps.

There's also what Isildur said, which is that in a competitive system wins are measured by a combination of player skill and advantage gap. We have a "rock, paper, scissors" balance system and while player skill accounts for something it can't help you if the guy just hits you twice as hard and often as you hit him. So, by lessening the prepping options, you effectively lessen the gap.

>#2 is the most important, the rest just sorta support that.
>Do a lot of people con-die right now? No. Why do people delete
>chars if they can't be incredibly active? Basically because
>their gear goes away. That's really the major bottleneck.

At the very least, I think you should be able to go into a guild and outfit after your gear gets stripped out. I don't think we ever implemented that. Probably that doesn't go far enough, but it beats starting from scratch with your bare hands if your gear was good enough.

I have some other ideas on this front, but I'll need to talk to Zulg about how viable they may or may not be.

What if the game automatically re-strung any gear that would currently be hit by hoarding code, as follows:

1. Make it non-limited.

2. Add a new flag "(degraded)" to indicate that the armor is no longer in its original state and you can't pass it off as the "real thing" in a trade.

3. Half all beneficial stats, rounding down. If it was +4 dam then it becomes +2 dam. +25 hp becomes +12 hp. Etc. Leave all negative effects in place.

4. Strip all progs and noremove/nodrop flags.

5. For weapons, subtract 10 from their weapon average.

The idea is that someone is still going to want to replace this stuff, but they won't be left naked. And what they're left with may still be "somewhat useful". Then again, this would probably be a bitch to code....so maybe not worth the effort.

Here were my thoughts when I was pondering this on the subway yesterday. Should be a bit easier to implement and I think the key is that it has to be viable from a competitive perspective. So, if its mage gear, it needs to give them a moderate amount of HP. Maybe not the equivalent of wearing two longevity bracelets, but *enough* that its not like you're totally gimped fighting everyone. If no one is going to use it (like current store-bought gear) then it has no value and may as well not waste the time doing anything.

1) Gear could be available, even if expensive, from stores in game. CF is counter-intuitive from other games in that almost nothing gear-wise that you buy from stores is useful.

2) If high quality unlimited gear was available for sale, the issue would be what would keep this gear from being everywhere and winding up on every sub-11 character that could beg a hero.

3) Sadly the only effective way to counter #2 is to make it so that gear from stores had level restrictions, whereas "gear in the wild" wouldn't.

4) Because the balance would change, limits would have to be tightened for gear on NPC's.

As a sidenote this would as a consequence make regearing easier, which just removes another hassle. I think you should be able to get to say, 85% with purchased gear and to get that extra power you need highly limited or unique gear. So there's still competition over gear, but I can also choose not to participate in that competition albeit at some reasonable disadvantage and reclaim my time instead.

>1) Significantly extend or remove age death and make con death
>significantly harder or eliminate it.

Really not a lot of characters go to either of these. Probably less than 1% of decently high level characters if that. Do you really think it's that much of a problem? If so, how? I don't want to be dismissive but I just don't see the angle here.



If I am playing a rager or a warrior i will probably reach hero with roughly half-2/3 of my con left, meaning I only have about two weeks to enjoy the rest of my character unless it's a high con race or I have a bunch of trains saved up - this on top of suffering lowered hp regens (which you guys have graciously aided with gearing for con helping those gains which was a great change imo). Maybe make con quests a tiny bit easier and less daunting? Something like - kill 5 mages or bring me the corpse of so and so instead of stuff that requires longterm planning from imms and coordinated efforts which make me not even want to bug an IMM for a con quest.


I haven't been keeping track, but I have probably con died over a dozen characters in my CF lifetime (yes I know I suck) but maybe you could be underestimating the impact of condeaths on the mud?

Auto'ing would probably make more sense to change than age-death. Con death does still make sense to change. People do get low in con, they just usually delete before con dying. Perception is more important though than reality. If people perceive they're going to auto a char or con die they adjust their behavior, regardless of whether or not it would really happen. When I'm looking at rolling a character, if I feel like in a month when I get married (I'm not, lets just pretend I am for the sake of this argument), that I'll auto, then chances are I just don't roll the character at all. Similarly, if I have the perception that my character will be worthless at hero due to lack of gear, then I just don't roll him at all.

When a character dies you effectively lose all the effort that went into building that character, which is a much more significant loss than any gear or whatever in and of itself. So the point I was mostly driving at was that its more appealing to do the effort once to a veteran for a single character rather than several times for multiple characters. IE, its better to put an extra 50 hours of work into one character than go and roll another character that has a front-load of 70-100 hours ranking/etc. So I guess what I would adjust is the efficiency. And if you give the perception that there is nothing to lose by rolling a character then you'll find people more inclined to start up a character knowing they might have some period of inactivity.

As a side note, perception is part of the problem with gear and the anti-hording code. You don't really know how long it takes to lose gear or get a feel for that until it happens to you a few times. The perception of maybe losing all your gear is enough to keep people from playing at all unless they feel like they can guarantee a sufficient stretch of time to play.

>As a side note, perception is part of the problem with gear
>and the anti-hording code. You don't really know how long it
>takes to lose gear or get a feel for that until it happens to
>you a few times. The perception of maybe losing all your gear
>is enough to keep people from playing at all unless they feel
>like they can guarantee a sufficient stretch of time to play.

FYI, this is something we've been talking about a decent amount this weekend. I'd expect to see some beneficial changes to how we handle this soon.

I think a combination of ranking, prep gathering and gearing (in order to be competitive) takes up so much time that the player who just wants to do 3 or 4 hours on a weekend is obviated.

I think it's unclear who CF caters to... but to me it seems to, by default, favor the player who can pump in 10-20 hours a week at a minimum.

I myself don't have that kind of time, and that's why I haven't played in seven months or so.

Ranking:

Let me suggest that the percentage of time in a character's life spent ranking is inversely proportional to the time he spends at hero.

I suspect that most characters only spend about 50 hours actively ranking before they reach lvl 51. Now most people take longer than 50 hours to get there, but that's because they spend time on things like empowerment, spamming skills, player-killing, looking for gear, etc.

So if you play a character to age death then you've really only spent about 8% of that character's life killing mobs. If, however, you hero your characters and delete shortly afterwards, or never hero them at all, then you may spend more than half your time just ranking.

Preps:

If you can't handle the fact that you just won't be competitive with some folks without massive preps, then yeah, you're going to have to spend a lot of time keeping those preps on hand. If you can handle the fact that there are some characters with whom you just won't be very competitive, then you're freed from the obligation to spend that time. Just limit yourself to PK'ing people you can handle using whatever level of preps you feel it's "reasonable" to keep on hand.

I don't spend a lot of time gathering preps with my current character, and I tend to do "okay". Not spectacular by any means, but not a door mat either.

This is even more true if you limit yourself to classes that have less reliance on preps. Ragers, shamans and paladins come to mind. Does that mean there are classes you can't play? Sure. But it also means there are classes you can be effective with and not have to spend much time gathering preps.

Time:

I agree that CF caters to people who can devote 10-20 hours a week, and that that will disadvantage some people. But I don't think it completely edges out the weekend player. As long as you can play often enough to avoid hoarding code, you should be able to stay in a cabal. You won't ever be leader, you probably won't ever get a tat, and you probably won't reach the highest echelon within your cabal...but you could still log on every so often and PK some people.

I would say, at hero, you get to do a lot more actual playing. At hero most everything you need is accessible, and the interaction to boredom ratio favors interaction more often.

I guess my point is that if you take that 80 hour trip to hero, and consider that 50 hours of is spent ranking, probably 10 or 15 hours is spent gathering the most basic of gear and preps (detect invis, fly, money for healer) that's about 65 hours to reach hero. Now the game doesn't start at hero, but it's the easiest place to coast along. A 30th level necro doesn't have nearly as many choices for gameplay open to him as does a 51st one.

My point would be that if you are playing an average of five hours a week, and you figure you have 65 hours of boredom to reach a 80ish hour hero, that you are needing 13 weeks or about 3.25 months to get to hero. I think this is probably a conservative estimate, and in my opinion there are a lot more fun things I can do for 13 weekends than buy detect invis and kill elves in Darsylon.

>I would say, at hero, you get to do a lot more actual
>playing. At hero most everything you need is accessible, and
>the interaction to boredom ratio favors interaction more
>often.

Actually, I get bored a lot at hero. The people I want to kill are often harder to find, since they no longer need to rank.

>My point would be that if you are playing an average of five
>hours a week, and you figure you have 65 hours of boredom to
>reach a 80ish hour hero, that you are needing 13 weeks or
>about 3.25 months to get to hero. I think this is probably a
>conservative estimate, and in my opinion there are a lot more
>fun things I can do for 13 weekends than buy detect invis and
>kill elves in Darsylon.

Then spread it out. Instead of heroing in 80 hours, don't power rank. Out of your five hours a week, maybe rank for two of them and spend the other three PKing.

Out of curiosity, how many hours does it take for a "normal" person to reach lvl 70 in WoW?

I especially agree with your observation of time spent ranking vs. time at hero. Time spent at hero can be in the 80%-90% range for most characters, if those characters are played to age/con death. Those who choose to delete early are missing out on the rewards of their ascent up the ranking ladder, and yes - it probably does seem like a grind if all you do is, well, grind characters up to hero and then delete.

For what it's worth, I have about an hour to play Fjarn 2-3 days a week, with a couple hours here and there on weekends. This has been true since the beginning of Fjarn. While I wasn't a strictly weekend player, some weeks it turned out that way. I was a mortal for 10 or 11 months and over 400 hours, which is about 40 hours per month, or roughly 10 hours per week, on average.

Fjarn got inducted into the Battleragers, became a Veteran, and eventually was chosen as Commander.

Now, after having done it, I can say that I think this was probably at the cusp of the minimum for leadership. I know I had many logins that were entirely devoted to maintaining the cabal. Probably half my time was duty first, fun second...so if that's not your cup of tea, then low play time and leadership won't mesh.

But you -can- still participate and even rise to power in a cabal. You -can- still advance a role and enjoy character development. You -can- keep your playerkilling abilities from getting too rusty, and still get that adrenaline rush. You -can- go exploring and hunt for awesome gear. You -can- still be rewarded for contributing to the game in some way. Even if you are "just" a weekend warrior.

I guess I just wanted to use my example to break the illusion that a lower playtime character can't be both fun and rewarding. Don't let that stop you from throwing the next neat character into the mix.

One little postscript - The really ironic thing is that I tend to get bored with the repetition at the hero ranks. I actually enjoyed when we finally got some folks into the mid-40s, because then I could go help them get some levels. It's social. It's active. It's dangerous. Mobs to dodge. Enemies to look out for. Ambushes to get trapped in, and maybe even escape from. Ranking was a pleasant change from the raid/retrieve/regear grind of hero life.

I told you it was ironic.

Just one thing I thought about reading your post is something that I think about in regards to Eve (the game I'm currently playing). In Eve, you don't have levels but you have skills. And the oldest players have retarded amounts of skills. So when you go up against them, you're at a huge disadvantage. But the thing is, to really take advantage of those skills, they have to fly very expensive ships. Because really, in a given ship, only so many skills actually come into play.

So while they "outclass you", they are also risking much more in the fight than you are (because the ships are literally like 100x as expensive), should they choose to take the advantage. Hence the risk vs reward ratio makes it a very high risk fight for them compared to the advantage they gain and if they fly a ship similar to yours you'll be roughly equivalent to each other after a few months of playing.

In CF, preps don't really work that way. The advantage gained far outweighs the effort required to gather said preps. So if I don't prep, the guy has a huge advantage while almost having the same risk as I do. Also in CF there's a much wider gap between the haves and have nots. The smaller population of CF increases the burden on every individual to fight better. If I'm in a cabal, I need to be able to fight the top guys of the opposing cabal with at most one or two allies, and likely none at all.

All of those factors lead to a scenario where if you're going to bother fighting you may as well get the best gear you can get and the best preps you can get because doing otherwise is just asking to be someone's whipping stick. This is why most people feel that prepping is required and highly limited gear is required. I honestly think rolling around in midnight dragon gear at hero without any preps is something that you can only get away with as an uncaballed. So while theoretically you can casually play CF, the reality is you can't do that without having a nearly insurmountable disadvantage.

and I'm not sure how I missed your post. Though today when I pulled up to my office (that I've been at for 2 years) and parked in my spot (that I've been parking in for 2 years) I realized that I was not in MY spot - I was in the handicap spot.

How the hell did I do that?

Old age???

There's only so many things to rp when you've been killing the same mob for the nth time. It gets old really quickly.

This is supposed to be a game - i.e fun. I fail to see any funstick benefit from spamming and spam killing the same mobs apart from the saddos who get off on repetitive tasks and seeing lines of 100% on their skills list.

Let the saddos have their spam practising fun, but let the rest of us who want to explore, actually do something that has an impact on Thera do so without wasting days of our life doing boring nonsense.

Thankyou.

So you'd like the game more if everybody started at lvl 51 with straight 100%s across the board, excluding skills like assassinate, power word kill, etc.?

Seriously?

That's not what I said at all.

I just think a boost to the ranking XP would be entirely justified. Nothing more.

>Let the saddos have their spam practising fun, but let the
>rest of us who want to explore, actually do something that has
>an impact on Thera do so without wasting days of our life
>doing boring nonsense.

Why can't you?

There are all kinds of ridiculous XP out there that don't require you to form up a typical ranking group and mow down mobs. I guarantee you it's possible to hero a character in about a hundred hours without ever doing it, while simultaneously getting caballed, racking up a ton of PKs, etc.

If you want to level the fastest way possible, the traditional ranking option is there for you. If you don't, other options are available to you. I'm not sure what you actually want here, or if you've really thought through what the results would be if you got it.

>There are all kinds of ridiculous XP out there that don't
>require you to form up a typical ranking group and mow down
>mobs. I guarantee you it's possible to hero a character in
>about a hundred hours without ever doing it, while
>simultaneously getting caballed, racking up a ton of PKs,
>etc.

This is pretty hard to swallow. Low-end for hero xp is about 440k if I recall. You're saying a character can rack up 440k xp from observation, exploration, commerce, quests and imm awards, all within 100 hours?

The corollary to this, of course, is that if you never fight mobs your skills will be crap. So ranking serves the duel purpose of gaining xp while simultaneously boosting your skill levels.

>This is pretty hard to swallow. Low-end for hero xp is about
>440k if I recall. You're saying a character can rack up 440k
>xp from observation, exploration, commerce, quests and imm
>awards, all within 100 hours?

Plus skill improvements, plus cabal raiding, plus killing all the mobs that you're going to while doing those things plus the other things you do, such as PK and equipment-gathering.

One example: the assorted kill X number of things quests. Do one of those and you'll get a level or two just from fighting the mobs, plus some other XP tossed on at the end. (If getting a group and mowing through the same mobs is more fun to you, by all means, do it; but you've got some options.)

Another example: Taking a good trip through Trothon is a boatload of exploration/observation XP; it's also about a level's worth, give or take, of mob killing unless you're already a hero or flee past everything.

nt

You get the echo and the addition to your totals for tracking and rewards, but, you aren't going to get a level's worth of exp because you can't level. And your exp to next level doesn't go up.

I'm not sure what you actually want
>here, or if you've really thought through what the results
>would be if you got it.

More exp per mob, quicker skill learning.

The consequences as I can see them - people would get through ranks quicker, be able to explore the classes quicker, and there would be more concentration in the hero ranks, allowing for more interaction.

I see CF as being in a vicious circle of people leaving because CF is becoming a timesink where the reward/tedium ration isn't cutting it. The reward/tedium ratio isn't cutting it because of people leaving. This makes finding ranking groups or even pk harder, making ranking harder and dispiriting people, therefore they leave. What I suggest might attract people back.

And of course you know of super easy ways to get to hero in 100 hours. You know the code and have been playing for years. How about giving us concrete examples of ranking alternatives instead of implying we're idiots when the playing field is anything but level in what we're talking about here.

>The consequences as I can see them - people would get through
>ranks quicker, be able to explore the classes quicker, and
>there would be more concentration in the hero ranks, allowing
>for more interaction.

Eh. It's a double-edged sword. The easier it is to power another character to hero, the more people are inclined to delete the first time something goes wrong.

Mostly, if there's grind to the game, it's because you're manufacturing it. There's a guy who deletes if he gets a bad HP gain in the first ten or more levels. I assume if it gets twice as fast to level that guy will be doing it for the first twenty.

>And of course you know of super easy ways to get to hero in
>100 hours. You know the code and have been playing for years.
>How about giving us concrete examples of ranking alternatives
>instead of implying we're idiots when the playing field is
>anything but level in what we're talking about here.

See elsewhere in this thread.

Note, that's if you want to level to hero in a 100 or so hours without ever doing the traditional grouping thing. If you're just trying to crank out levels as fast as you can with a group, under 50 should not be that hard, and under 30 is certainly doable depending on what you are.

There's not a lot of magic to this. It doesn't involve super secret levelling areas, just a relentless pursuit of efficiency:

• Always be getting XP. Don't be the guy who doesn't go out and get XP unless conditions are perfect and it's the ideal group of three. (I can be that guy, because I generally don't care how fast I level and may even want to take my time and do a lot of fighting/exploring/PK at the midlevels. You also might consider trying this as an alternative to seeing levelling as a grind, but that's a digression from the matter at hand.)


• Minimize the amount of time/energy you spend getting gear. The kind of gear you can get for yourself in less than an hour is plenty good to level with. Better to wear fine leather into your 30s than waste a lot of time on gear. If it takes you an hour to get that flaming sword to kill trolls with faster, you're probably going to need to kill trolls for about ten hours to make up that time. (Of course, if you are planning to kill trolls for about ten hours, by all means, invest the time.)


• Minimize the time you spend getting preps. Probably, if it isn't detect invis, return, or teleport, don't bother -- and detect invis you probably can let slide and count on a groupmate to cover. There's some risk there, obviously.


• Minimize the time you spend sleeping. Grouping with at least one healing/support character can be good for this. If you're an invoker, this may mean throwing your most mana-efficient spell instead of the new, expensive one you want to work on. If you're a conjurer, your group should never be waiting for you to sleep up for servitor mana. Conjure with what you have and keep moving. Characters with both damage and healing spells probably should save their mana for healing. Use whichever skills help you best kill the mob at hand fastest -- this isn't the time to practice trip.


• You care about XP over time, not getting the biggest XP per kill. For example, the Academy is one of the best places for the first ~5 levels not because it gives the most XP, but because, even with just a suit of fine leather and an expertly balanced practice weapon, you can mow down the fleshies super fast without resting.


• Pick an area to level in that suits the strengths of your group. If you have a paladin and the other two characters in the group are fairly good tanks, probably the Mausoleum looks pretty good for the right stretch of levels. On the other hand, if you've got one good tank and two very squishy characters, maybe that isn't such a good idea. In general, the less healing/support you have, the more you want to fight a lot of simple mobs close to your level, since, as above, you want the most XP for time and you want to minimize your resting.


• Pick an area to level in that suits the conditions at the time. If you're a mage with a lot of non-arial non-Cloud Battle in your range, maybe something like Arial City looks pretty good because you know they can't interrupt you until you stop to rest.


• Generally, you want to avoid PK for optimal levelling speed. The exception is if you think you are well set up to win any PKs that may occur, probably bolstering the quality if your gear with a minimum of time investment.


• Make use of healers + barter where appropriate.


• Round up help, if possible. Most of the time it won't be, but when it is, it's gravy. If you're caballed, there's bound to be a time in which the heroes of your cabal are bored and want to help you level. (Of course, if you're trying for optimal speed here, you'd probably be uncaballed since you won't then be interrupted by cabal raids.) Maybe that invoker you grouped with ten levels ago would like to tag along with your group and practice his spells while you're fighting.


• Pick your specializations to help you level faster. If you're a warrior and one of your planned legacy choices is useful for fighting mobs and the other really isn't, pick the useful one at 44.


• Avoid dying, but if it happens, dust yourself off and keep on going. That XP hole isn't going to be any smaller if you log off and come back to look at it another day, and at least right now you've got a group to help bust you out of it fast.


• If you absolutely, positively, cannot get any group, either explore/quest for XP, kill the best thing you can kill for XP, or if that isn't even viable, gather gear or work on skills that will help you level faster when you can.

>Always be getting XP. Don't be the guy who doesn't go out
>and get XP unless conditions are perfect and it's the ideal
>group of three.

This is generally good advice, but for the purposes of reaching lvl 51 in as few game hours as possible I'm not sure it is. If you can't assemble a decently efficient ranking group, just quit and hope you can find one next time you log on. "Slow ranking" just adds to your hours-played without a correspondingly large addition to your xp. If the goal is to minimize the amount of RL hours spent before you hero, then yeah, "slow ranking" beats "no ranking" any day.

The bit about barter+healers is HUGE by the way. To the extent that it seems like game mechanics abuse for certain areas.

In particular, I usually get slowed down by constantly searching for "obtainable but usually not there" gear. Spiked collars, fertility mask, gleaming silver sword, etc. And I almost always eat at least one mob death trying to kill some mob for gear that I really shouldn't be fighting at my level.

"Eh. It's a double-edged sword. The easier it is to power another character to hero, the more people are inclined to delete the first time something goes wrong."

I have to ask the question why you have a problem with people deleting if that´s what they want to do. Surely it should be their choice...

Using the prospect of the hours of suckitude that ranking involves as a stick to blackmail people out of deletion because they´re not having fun strikes me as a pretty crummy moral line under which to be running a game. A bit like those coders who deliberately omitted a save game function in old school linear-style video games.

I´ve also been thinking about what CF needs to do to maintain a decent playerbase. It´s clear from my perspective that to survive CF either needs young blood, as Dios´ poll of our average age dictates, or it needs to be made more user friendly for people whose personal situation dctates they only have a few hours a week to play. I am doubtful that the first is really an option, but it´s possible, and certainly more likely if you make CF more "plug and play." The ranking boost would undoubtedly do this, and it would also give people who can´t play much a bit more of an incentive. It would also be easy to code and 100% reversible.

To sum up, even if I agreed 100 percent with your prognosis of the problems an XP boost would cause I would stil take it a million times over than have CF slowly peter out due to haemorrhaging players.

I really like and care about the game and the community, and I think it would be a great shame if it disappeared because it didn´t adapt to keep up with peoples´personal circumstances.

>"Eh. It's a double-edged sword. The easier it is to power
>another character to hero, the more people are inclined to
>delete the first time something goes wrong."

Basically, most of what people consistently say they prefer about play at hero vs. low or mid-levels goes away if having a hero becomes more trivial.

>>"Eh. It's a double-edged sword. The easier it is to power
>>another character to hero, the more people are inclined to
>>delete the first time something goes wrong."
>
>Basically, most of what people consistently say they
>prefer about play at hero vs. low or mid-levels goes away if
>having a hero becomes more trivial.
>

What do people say most of the time in this regard? Because I cannot think of a single thing that would be, imo, degraded by halving experience needed for all level gains. What I want from hero range is to focus on RP/PK. I understand that ranking adds conflict and spice but feel that it is too long and too tedious. I've just had too many logins where I can't find a group. And I'm struggling to think of how I could reach 51 without ranking like posted elsewhere. The commerce/quest/explore routes become tedious quite quickly too as they are repetitive over multiple characters or just downright spammy. I appreciate the additions and there are quests I still have not figured out but if that's all there is? In the end, it's the interaction with others that drives CF. Ranking is the worst form of interaction as RP'ing purging the woods from trolls for the 500th time becomes quite state quite fast. A mechanism to shorten the chore but keep the spice seems quite apposite. Why can't this be done?

Also, I'm one of those players who has but a few hours a week to play. I’d be curious if someone on staff could come up with the average time played per week by character. Valg did some numbers for warrior specs that were quite interesting.

>What do people say most of the time in this regard?

It's a lot of different things, but it boils down to believing that the quality of player is better at hero. Better RP, more skilled mechanically, etc.

There's an element of rules enforcement to this, too. We catch lowbies cheating a lot more often than heroes. No small part of this is because losing a hero hurts.

>
>>What do people say most of the time in this regard?
>
>It's a lot of different things, but it boils down to believing
>that the quality of player is better at hero. Better RP, more
>skilled mechanically, etc.
>
>There's an element of rules enforcement to this, too. We
>catch lowbies cheating a lot more often than heroes. No small
>part of this is because losing a hero hurts.

Right, and none of those will be negatively impacted by halving experience needed to level. In the qhcf poll on tweaking experience gains the margin for such a tweak is pretty big (vox populi caveats may apply, of course). But I still have not seen any good reason why this cannot/should not be changed. My hunch is that CF is trying to stay relevant. Numbers are falling (I understand some people oversell this and that it's summer) and one reason is the learning curve (and I grant/appreciate the numerous tweaks to lessen this). Another reason is that old timers are "too old" for serious CF, have too little time. How does decreasing experience needed for guild advancement by a factor of 0.5 not help this?

How about an experiment: Setup a week/month where experience gains are doubled. See what happens? In the summer this might even be a good "PR stunt" to pull in some folks.

>Right, and none of those will be negatively impacted by
>halving experience needed to level.

... yeah. I'm not buying that.

>How about an experiment: Setup a week/month where experience
>gains are doubled.

Heh. I know better than to think you could ever make a change like that anything but permanent.

>>Right, and none of those will be negatively impacted by
>>halving experience needed to level.
>
>... yeah. I'm not buying that.

What are your specific concerns then?

>>
>>There's an element of rules enforcement to this, too. We
>>catch lowbies cheating a lot more often than heroes. No
>small
>>part of this is because losing a hero hurts.
>
>Right, and none of those will be negatively impacted by
>halving experience needed to level.

If you think more people wouldn't cheat at the hero level if you could just roll up another character and be a hero again in a couple days, you are wrong. Cheating at the hero level would go up alot as the penalty to get back to that level would be decreased by what ever you decrease the expierence needed to get there.

As an aside, my current character hero'd in about 120 hours. Being only my second hero (third to the hero ranks though), I'm not sure why people think it is so incredibly hard.

Cheating wasn't my initial concern when I thought about the idea. My concern would be people giving other people the shaft because it's so easy to roll another hero.

Suppose I were a hero goodie and am annoyed by some other goodie. Because it's so easy to make another hero, I don't have as much disincentive to screw over that person in a bad-goodie-role-play sort of way. Sure, it may result in me getting turned evil and losing all my class skills. So what! I can have another hero in three days!

Other times, it's taking me more than 39 hours to find a decent group. It's a strange animal, heroing. Sometimes it's the easiest thing in the world, other times it's so daunting I just give up.

People who totally disregard acting like a complete asshat and getting denied? It's bad. The majority of the playerbase, it's not so bad.

Even the asshats often take a moments pause before throwing away a hero because they want to throw a hissy fit.

To be honest, having to delete and start over, is the only penalty for doing completely out of character things, breaking role, minor cheating, spamming, etc. The lower that barrier and the handful of asshats on CF will behave that way more. Or just behavior like power ranking up a revenge combo (for example a duergar designed for no purpose other than to full sac the assassin that you mistakenly think just full looted your other character)

For the majority of the playerbase, even throwaway characters have some decent level of quality. For the minority, they might be a nightmare.

I tried to make an argument comparing a couple of MMORPG's that I've played, but my Engrish is retarded this morning and I gave up. So to summarize: If it's too easy to rank or if the only worthwhile content is at the hero ranks, people will get bored and leave (whether it's 10 hours or 100 hours to hero). If it's too hard to rank or if there isn't a significant amount of hero content, then there's no motivation to drive through the ranks, and people will get bored and leave.

CF is actually pretty well-balanced in this regard. CF is also different from other MMORPG's in that to a great extent, you make your own content - from level 1 to 51.

Now, you define ranking in CF as a chore. I see ranking as a development time for my characters. My characters make friends and create relationships with other characters. They make enemies. Partnerships and rivalries arise. The characters grow and develop as their roles in Thera mature. Things happen for good or ill, and I find myself more and more attached to a character. Victories are sweet. Defeats are bitter. And when I finally make it to hero, I have more motivation to play the character out.

That leads me to another conclusion. Getting better at hero-range pk is not a case of "how fast can you get to hero". It's how long you stay there. A player who gets frustrated and deletes after 5 hours at hero isn't going to improve, whether it takes him 20 hours to hero or 100.

From another viewpoint, ranking forces conflict. PK is a huge part of the draw of CF. Two major magnets for conflict are cabal wars and ranking groups. If you go hunting at the sub-hero ranks, the first thing you probably do is check the popular ranking areas for that level range. Shorter time in ranking pk range means less overall conflict at the sub-hero levels. I would argue that less conflict is a bad thing, and I personally don't mind the current rate of ranking.

And finally, every year the active playerbase drops at the beginning of summer. School's out, kids are home, vacations are planned, the days are longer, and folks just generally get out and enjoy the weather. What really hit CF this year was the server crash. I don't know about you guys, but I have the hardest time getting back into a character after a couple-week hiatus. I took a 2-week vacation in October and I had to force myself to log back in to Fjarn. I'm certainly glad I did, and I still regret some of the other characters I've let pass due to a week or two of inactivity.

The best advice I can give on the "I can't get back into my character" problem is to start by rereading your role. Add a chapter if you like. Log in for a solid two-hour session. Kill some mobs so you can remember how to fight. Roleplay with potential friends and enemies - in range, or out of range. Convince a mage to give up magic. Convince a paladin to betray his god. Convince a necromancer to stop defiling corpses. Convince a druid to stop mooning everyone. Convince a lowbie to join your cause, whatever it may be. You don't have to actually "win" the encounter to come out ahead - the interaction will probably be enough to rekindle your interest.

You might find that it doesn't take all that much to get hooked again.

It's nice having a game that's spread out over ranks.

But it's too little butter over too much bread at the moment.

Focusing it on something like Hero ranks might be healthier for the Fun meter in general.

Mainly because, for reasons that are as yet unknown to me, I can pk from 1-50 with 80% successfulness, but the second I hit 51, my pk ratio goes straight in the toliet. I rarely enjoy the hero ranks, and my characters are even more rare to rank past the last skill they get or legacy or whatever. The game ends at Hero and I'm the one killing your ass as you race there. Now shut up and take your medicine.

And get better then.

It's not my fault you can't hang with heros.

Hero's a different game.

It requires different skills, and the average player at hero isn't necessarily more skilled than the average midlevel player. If anything, I'd say hero plays more to ganging than solo skill, compared with midlevels.

Given the choice of hunting with allies or alone I'll chose alone 99% of the time even if it means I walk into a group of 3 enemies and get destroyed.

I'm the same. I just leave the groups of three alone, and try to pick them off when they're not all together.

Thanks big guy :)