As weird and counter-intuitive as it sounds, given the size of the player base, is it worth considering consolidating the cabals to a smaller number of options?

I know there was issues with Masters & etc but I feel like the players are spread too thin.

It's a repetative game of capture the flag that consumes too much of the player base.

It's nearly impossible to play a character with out considering who will kill you.

I've wacked so many noobs over the years who were flaberghasted why my X killed their Y.

I rarely hear bitches about my orcs because even noobs realize I'm being Orcy.

Nix the cabals, mix their powers in with the races. Develop Racial territories and set in place systems for determining leadership unique to each.

Cabals have completely homogenized the game and promoted "Humans" in funny suits.

It's a big shift but the game needs a big change not just mild tweakings and balancing of skills and spells.

You need the capture the flag aspect because you have to force conflict between enemies. Otherwise, people wouldn't fight each other all that often. The game requires that conflict in specific areas.

Cabal raiding and especially retrieving should be even more encouraged.

I'd be fine if character's received edge points for retrieving against odds - the greater the odds, the greater the reward. Something in line with 75 immexp pts per in range defender. Not raiding, but retrieving.

Raiding so many times would be neat to eventually get some basic cabal oriented edges. Nothing that really directly impacts pk but things like extending the timers (+2 to 10 extra hours) on cabal skills like windwalk, vigilance, truesight, mantle, and so forth. So after taking the codex and downing it (not simply participating) for the 15th time might give me a small boost to lightforge (crumbles less quickly or will not crumble while in combat) or mantle (lasts 50 hours instead of 40).

So would half the playerbase, you are big time wrong on this one.

Agreed.
The cabal system serves a pretty important function, and I for one like the cabals even if I seldom played cabal characters, just because those interworkings give me different angles on which to interact with people. It makes sense that like minded individuals would bond together for a common purpose, a cabal is just a preexisting structure which facilitates that. Given how diverse the existing cabals are, there is pretty much no conceivable role concept that could not fit into one of them, and the inner workings of each allow for them to be a team, but outside of fortress and maybe nexus, that team is not etched in stone.

Imperials are all manipulating trying to make emperor, scions kill everything in their path including other scions, and tribunal, village and outlander allow for internal dynamic of goods and evils working together without really trusting each other.

And heralds are just the catch all for the roles that don't fit well anywhere else.

Can the system be improved upon the raid/retrieve repeat aspect. Certainly. There were past discussions on cabalwars about how to make them more exciting and get more people really involved in them. The only real hard part is implementing those ideas as things would essentially have to be rewritten to be set to certain variables depending on cabal influences. Maybe have a timer when each cabal's influence is weighed, and the strongest one determines the outcome for the following period until it changes again.

So maybe if the scions hold sway at the end of a week random aggressive nightwalkers begin popping up all over Thera and do so for a week. Lowbies die from them. Oh well. Guess those fortress guys better get off their ass and make sure it does not happen.

I'd propose a general perk that always goes to the winner, something small since it would go to all members of that cabal (maybe +20 morale) and a cabal specific perk.

For Empire you get centurions now creating blockades on points on all the major roads and heavy discounts at shops in protected cities, maybe they can demand protection money from them.

For Scion I like the idea of portals popping up randomly in areas and spawning druktar or nightwalkers. Overpowered but given how rare it is for them to hold sway for a long period of time I think they should have the nastiest perk.

For Battle the veil can now never be thin, maybe a +5 boost to dam roll and a bonus -10 save spell.

For Nexus they get more benefit out of bond or vanguard, maybe veil can never be thick.

For Outlander maybe they can camo anywhere, maybe aggressive treants pop up in places that attack anything orderly.

For Tribunal maybe stronger gate guards come to the cities and high level bounty hunters can be called to track down criminals.

And heralds just sit by and watch.

Making determinations could depend on items taken, items lost, items retrieved. Not just time with or without an item since that is more dependent on players playing, but give 1 point for a complete raid, take away half for a lost item, and give 1/4 for a retrieval. It encourages raiding to strengthen your own and weaken your foe, it encourages retrieving so you can raid others and the small bonus for it. It encourages defense at inners and outers to prevent those things from happening. If there is something on the line more than I would defend but I'd hate to die and lose my eq, people might be more involved.

Of course these were ideas I came up with as I was writing this post so they may not be too well flushed out. I realize there are problems in that certain cabals don't raid as much as others, but then that means they won't lose as much. And it might encourage more lesser seen fighting, like scions going for tribunal just to get that edge in points.

I actually find the "capture the flag" aspect sort of annoying. I like the idea of being on a "team" and having an enemy "team" that I'm working against, but the "take the item, guard the item, etc." gets kind of tedious. I'm just not sure what to replace it with.

I purposely avoid cabals. I dislike trying to create a character that fits the mold of the various cabals - and that's what it feels like. It feels like I'm forcing my characters to fit a concept so I can get "cool" cabal powers.

I think sometimes the individual roleplayers get overlooked in favor of the caballed; most of the tmie, I've found the uncaballed players to be the most impressive in terms of rp and "flavor". I would welcome the opportunity to join ranks with other drow, or other dwarves, or even other humans... instead, I think Pro is right - the cabals are full of "humans" in funny suits.

Cabal stupid.

>It's a repetative game of capture the flag that consumes too
>much of the player base.

What do you do if you're not doing cabalwars stuff? What, in the current system, is preventing you from just going uncaballed and doing that stuff?

Is it the lack of cabal powers that annoys you about going uncaballed in the current system? Lack of imm attention? Something else?

>It's nearly impossible to play a character with out
>considering who will kill you.

How is this related to cabals? Wouldn't you have to consider this even if cabals didn't exist?

>I've wacked so many noobs over the years who were
>flaberghasted why my X killed their Y.

How is this related to cabals? Wouldn't this be the case even without cabals?

One of my biggest gripes with the cabals is that they have all have goals which are often left ignored.

For example:

Fortress wants to eradicate evil. I've seen quite a few Squires, and even Maran, who are content to take the cabal items of the evil cabals and then move on to exploration, gear-getting, etc., and ignore the fact that there are evil people on to PK, especially if they aren't high value targets. The idea of venturing into dark, scary evil places and slaughtering the NPC evil never crosses anyone's mind, of course. The Scribes and Acolytes spend most of their time helping the other half of the cabal do this stuff, but rarely preaching, counseling, etc. The RP aspect of Fortress makes plenty of sense, but what characters actually have the ability to do and change IC limits how well they can realistically "banish evil from the lands".

Empire wants to subjugate the lands and control all of Thera. What Empire actually does is raid every cabal (that they feel like raiding on that day) and then basically do what every other single hero does. Where's the politics? Where's the country-building or massive warring one would expect of a power hungry Empire? The Empire doesn't seem very Imperial, IMHO.

Outlanders have certain enemies and they do a fine job of hunting them down, raiding Tribunal, etc. Some of the evil ones even do a decent job of instigating chaos, but rarely does the philosophy of Thar-Eris or the underlying goals of Outlander, besides "PK X, Y, and Z" come out.

The list goes on, but the point is that all the cabals have their own stories, goals, etc., almost like religions, but at the end of the day all we ever see is the capture the flag / kill this opposing group dynamic that gets old.

I think the cabal system itself just needs to become more complex, and/or characters need more to do at hero. Once you've got your equipment done up right and your preps gathered, etc., hero life becomes about nothing more than the same microcosm of "me vs. them" skirmishing 95% of the time.

Even most of the MMORPGs out there that are considered very repetitive make up for that fact by giving players a much greater breadth of things to do, work on, and refine, albeit by doing the same things over and over.

The biggest drawback to implementing widespread changes in the cabal system (like the things you say don't go on) is that it as an astronomical amount of work to really implement. It would be nice if imperials really could take over the other cities, consume tribunal and do what they wanted to. But the actual writing and coding of such is probably more of the problem. I would love ot have the most immersive and complex world imagineable, but there are limitations, and given those I can't say I mind what is in place without a better alternative that is easily implemented. (I think the idea I suggested elsewhere on this thread would not be entirely difficult to put in but would still require a lot of work)

Empire building for imperials? They would have to constantly be rewriting areas to keep up with changes with the ebb and flow of power for them.

If you're complaining about a lack of player RP, that's different, and perhaps the cabal system stifles it a bit when you realize you really can't destroy a cabal so you don't get as into it cause you get no sense of lasting reward even if you kill 200 imperials. But RP is up to players to work on, and that's a differnt topic.

I don't disagree that making serious changes to the cabal system would involve a ton of time. As a programmer by trade, I can appreciate the level of effort required, especially when that effort is made outside the hours of 5-9.

Turning CF into a game with the complexity of Civilization or WoW or something is surely not going to happen, but I do think that making the cabal system more involved and interested is within the realm of possibility. There was some discussion a few weeks ago about making cabal hideouts larger, and/or adding more of them per cabal and making the raiding process larger and more involved.

The introduction of things like automated questing or perhaps some kind of automated / scripted raiding or siege type system might be cool too.

In most multi-player games, you at least have the option to go up against different people every night. In CF, I know that when I login on a given night, I'm going to be running pretty much the same plays against the same 4-5 guys. That gets old quick.

Unfortunately, the only good solution I can come up with that fixes most of these kinds of problems is "more people". More players to add variety to tactics, RP, and the demographics of the cabals as well as more Immortals to handle quests, events, as well as implementing features.

I think the problem is that the newer paradigm for almost every cabal is to have multiple leaders. Each cabal having a full set of active, interested leaders is becoming a less common scenario. This is especially bad in the case of cabals like Fortress where the cabal is split down the middle and leaders from one side simply do not induct into the other. Having multiple leaders is great for a lot of reasons, including avoiding burn-out and having someone to talk to if one leader just doesn't seem to jive with you for some reason.

The current player base simply cannot sustain the number of leader positions that exist, at least not with people who are genuinely interested in doing the job.

The idea of nuking cabals or merging them seems kind of hack. I suppose if a logical, interesting story could be dreamed up that justified whatever the abrupt changes would be it might go over alright, but it took years to carve the cabal politics into what they are, and taking dynamite to them now over mechanical problems probably won't end well.

I suggest giving every cabal member access to a power called "recommend" (level could vary by cabal) which they use to recommend pledged applicants. Like promotions in Empire, each cabal member can only recommend one person every X interval of time, with perhaps a maximum number of recommendations pending at any given time. At this point, the actual induction could be either automated or the final nod of the head could be given by the leader after a much more brief interview. I see the use of this based not only on cliche, unoriginal cabal interviews but also on behavior and responsibility. Granting your recommendation to a player could simply be for a job well done helping you get the cabal item back from a tough raid.

I realize most of this can be, and in most cases is accomplished through notes. Hard-coding the process into the game (like pledge) would just streamline it and help make it a "best practice", as well as open the cabal system up to more automation IF that's something the staff is interested in.

I'd rather see cabals become easier to get into and more about "easy in / easy out" than simply have four cabals run like a tight ship because four is all the cabals the player base can handle sustaining with the activity level people desire.