I was just thinking. It seems that many new players usually get stomped on by some other people just looking for that easy Pk. What ever the reasons are no matter. Perhaps that's one reason why we kinda seem to lose people, (I'm not complaining about that.) Actually I'm not complaining at all. But I was pondering an Idea perhaps to make it a little easier on those who are either new to CF or new to mudding in general.

What if when players go through the whole make a char process. When they get to the part that asks are they new to cf.. If they say yes, Put a flag next to there name that anyone who types in who would be able to see it. It would just tell people that they are new to cf, so maybe that would help most people go a bit easy on them? If not for the not killing maybe the not full looting. Maybe It would lift up there spirits a little bit and help them truck on.

Although I understand that that could be abused as a way for some of the players who like to take advantage Of anything that they can get there hands on. Put some kinda trigger on it where if they were to attempt to pk anyone, That flag would be removed.

This Idea doesn't seem very "game changing" Although It might just help some of the newer players stick around. Well till there second char where they say no to the new char.

Because of that selfish players out there.

To them, newbies would just be a target for:
- padding pk
- unholy blessing charges
- assassinate improvements
- taking any nice gear you might have been given
- e-peen extension

One change I would make is to create a "mentor" command, which works a little like the arena command, in that it allows a newbie to invite another player to mentor them, and that player to accept and decline. Cap the number of current mentees any player can have to 3 (or 5).

Then allow those players to talk ooc to each other whenever ic talk can't help the newbie. Also, it would mean that you could take an evil guy as your mentor even if you are good aligned.

The problem with the newbie channel as it stands is that you get comments like "Atranis, ask that question again on this channel" which immediately sticks a bulls-eye on that newbie if any are on who will use this to their advantage.

There may be folks who would abuse this to pad their PK counts.

"A newb on Eastern Road!! Free frag!!!"

I guess we'd have to base this on the honor system, and most people would honor it, but there are most likely those few players who would ruin it...it's always the few who ruin it.

Perhaps then set it up in the pbfs or where ever that It doesn't count towards there pk count if they kill (___) amount?

>There may be folks who would abuse this......

It would probably end up to working this way, and would most likely cause newbies to leave even quicker thinking "They know im a newbie, but they kill me all the time anyway, assholes."

CF is way more newbie friendly now, then when i started playing 2000ish, and with the exception of one semi-noteworthy character in '02 i didnt have any high ranking characters until i played Boca in '05. The on going problem is retention of existing players, and to be honest i never would have gone through 5 years of ####ty frustrating characters if there were only 35 people max on at a time. Then again in the age of WoW (which i just tried for the first time because of CF being down) and instant gratification in all media types,(i.e. kids watching comic book movies instead of reading comic books) it is going to be next to impossible to recruit the same amount of young people that grow into the core base of CF as in the past.

Ok that was a rant. I like the idea of having ideas to get CF back to its former glory, but maybe we all just need to accept that it might not be possible.

Yeah, getting PK'd isn't the problem. Getting PK'd, fullsacced, and then repeatedly PK'd as soon as you unghost until you log off... that's what drives people away. CF's pretty good about that these days. Even The monsters these days will cat and mouse you and let you learn/teach you how to run.

The learning curve is steep, but I think eating #### as a newbie actually helps speed it along. Like... I learned that the only mage class I should even bother with playing until I've been around a while is a flyto shifter :D If I heroed one on easymode, then tried to play another one without the newbie flag and got wrecked, that would honestly frustrate me more than how it is currently.