Fellow Cfers,

Team marketing has been working on some good things to try and get more players and we'd like to ask for some help from our wonderful player base. We will be unveiling some new pictures this weekend and will be picking three people (non-IMMs) to preview what we have and generate some discussions about it on the forums. You do not need to be a current player to do this. To apply, you only need to post a note on facebook and tag the CarrionFields FB page with your answers to the following:

1. Your name and forum handle.
2. A list of your memorable past characters.
3. Your favorite CF memory.
4. The character that influenced you the most, as a player.
5. If you could change/add one thing to make CF better, what would it be?
6. Post your CF testimonial to another site of your choice and send us the link.

Don't have a facebook account? You can send the answers to nnaeshuk@carrionfields.com and thror@carrionfields.com and we'll post it for you. We're really looking forward to the great possibilities that this will open up for current players, future players, and CF as a whole. We'll be making our decision on who the lucky three will be on Tuesday, Sept 21 at 8pm, system time. We look forward to your participation in helping us promote CF! As an added bonus, the three winners will all get a free PBF each (on top of the sweet, sneak peek).

I would also like to request that someone repost this on www.qhcf.net, if you don't mind.

RP may be more important to younger players than we older players are inclined to think.

Our youngest players in many cases honestly want to be their characters.

Maybe they have a closer connection to a time when they were free to play, where as 40yo's like myself are hardened by years of competition and we project that into the game.

http://www.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?2,857346,857346#msg-857346

Edit: Should have been a reply to the post of the guy asking to repost this in Dio's.

Even if you bring new players to discover CF what make you think they will stay?

Many leaves because they get frustrated at PK.

The best pker are the ones who, most of the time, have the best gear and weapons. That comes from experience and it's an mainly an advantage for vets and for melee classes (because wizards cannot use scrolls or wands with spells higher than their level).

The game (and classes) is supposed to be balanced when if fact it's not.

Wanna make the new players sticking to CF? Give them a chance to land some kills by reducing the advantage of the gear. You could simply make sure that you can use an item only if you have the level for it. Nothing discourage me more to engage someone who, at level 15, have a full set of midnight dragon stuff because i know I don't have the gear to match it.

Beside the fact that it will bring more balance to the game and give a chance to newer players, it would probably make vets to play Hero as fast as possible.

The only way to keep a student willing to learn when the learning is though (like in CF) is to make him experiment some success. If newcomers don't experiment successes at PK, they will eventually go.

You can already see that happening now.

It will balance things, yes, and it will be good.

It will prevent (somewhat) levelsitting and midrank pkillers (mindrank pkillers are people who use early strong skills against classes that mostly sucks on midranks, and most of them are new/unskilled players). For example, conjie on level 35-40.

Another big improvement is you would'nt be able to use a lvl 30-40 char (OOC body or other char you may have) to go kill a big mob and leave the gear on the ground to retrieve it with your lvl 15 char.

nt

Right after I returned to CF 4.5 years ago I did that with midnight gear I think. My main was grinding gold on the midnight dragon, leaving a #### load of midnight armors outside (Dragging it outside for newbies to pick up.) Later that day (5-6 hours later) I rolled a new char, remembered the midnight gear outside, ran over, grabbed it and 5mins later I was talking to an imm in ROTD about cheating. I was let off with a warning and gear-purge.

Got an RL buddy who deleted his char and his armors ended up in the pit in Arkham, 3 days later the gear was still there and he picked it up with his new char, poof ROTD and imm-talk about cheating.

I bet they have some sort system that makes you leave a fingerprint on the gear your IP touches or something. Just a guess though.

Whatever way you get your big piece of gear/weapon (by cheating or not) doesn't really matter here. Even if IP adress doesnt allow you to do it via multichar I'm not sure you cannot do it via OOC friends.

My point is vets (and melee class) get a huge advantage in PK via the gear and I think a lot of people leave because they get frustrated at PK. I'd like to have the point of view of players and Imms on the idea I've suggested (need the necessary level to use gear) to help newbies experiencing fun at pk.

Those who have something to loose are clearly the vets and melee classes. But are they loosing much compare to what they can gain in regard of playerbase improvement (more people and more mage)? And think about the RP and interaction aspect of it: If you're unable to solo kill everything around, that means you will have to interact, group and RP more with other players.

Besides the benefits this would bring to the game by making it more balanced, vets would still have knowledge of preps, area and gear, to advantage them at pk while the newbie have to learn all those things before he even get a small chance at it....

So what do you think?

P.S. Not sure of what ROTD stands for...

Your system won't change that.

I'm sorry to see that...

1) Your response is too short: 'Your system won't change that' is not enough... you need to add 'Because' and put a counterargument after it to make one change his mind on something.

2) You miss the main point by discussing on cheating instead of the benefits/disadvantages of level requirement to use gear.

3) You prefer to insult Russians (wich is unecessary) instead of elaborating a more extensive response.


It's clear you don't like the idea to get rid of the uberset advantage of vets for helping newbies enjoying pk. Ok we got it.


Anybody else has an opinion on the question?

This is a system to benefit you specifically. This is a proposal that takes away from the haves and gives to the have nots.

That's a system I am fundamentally against and I see no merit in it what so ever.

I didn't "Discuss on cheating" You did, I was actually deflecting the argument away from that aspect.

I just had a half-trained Drow-Assassin that with silverwood goblin and aldevari gear took down an Arial warrior with a Full set of Midnight without prepping.

Soon after I did, I start getting all sorts of bitching along the lines of "Wow! Another guy with Hero gear he couldn't have gotten himself!"

I'm not elite, but I manage to suit up by walking around to likely gear drops and killing people for theirs. Odds are if you are a noob in hero gear, I'm taking it from you if I want to.

The number one reason I stayed playing CF was because of how I COULD have an uberset.

During last 2 months that I am back and playing, I've seen about five your posts with "I will leave if imms will do this, that or that" thing, here or on dio's (and half of the flaming threads were deleted, thanks to you too).

Perhaps you like to see CF in stagnation mode, or perhaps you like to be a big fish in small pond, while most of other players would like to see CF not as a pond, but as a ocean.

You are way too gentle. Or scared by the possible changes, because your vet knowledge, that gives you advantage on other players, would be nerfed. That is a quite poor behavior, imo.

Show me these posts where I said I would leave, "If".

Of course, you could be waxing Clintonian and using the phrase "about 5 times" to mean "Once".

As for the rest of your post, it's supposition and completely inaccurate.

I doubt (but I might be wrong) that the possibility to have a uber set is your number one reason Pro.
I think you stay because you enjoy landing pkills wich is the core of CF.

The possibility to have a uberset is not your only advantage at it. You probably know a lot of this game (prep, area, gear stats) that would still make you a good pker even if you don't have a uberset.

The idea is to find a way to make more people enjoying it and hope this will result with something that I think would be good for CF: a bigger playerbase...

When I was looking for a MUD a decade ago.

This was a big selling point with me.

Personally, I think it's a bad system, and I hate it in every game I see it in.

>It will balance things, yes

Maybe, maybe not

>It will prevent (somewhat) levelsitting and midrank pkillers

This is not something the staff wants to discourage, in general.

Here are several objections I have:

First, it makes no logical sense. It's all game mechanics with no thematic structure. I hate it for that reason. How do you explain "Oh sorry, I'm not rank 30 yet, so I don't know how to wear that necklace" . It's absurd.

Second, I *like* having the possibility that lowbies can grab it. The only way I'd even it out is to make make +hit/dam affect spell damage/enemy save chance somehow, and then balance out the spells accordingly. But that's a big project.

Third, if you did this it would wreak havoc with the item limits. Suddenly there would be nothing available at some levels and too much available at other levels.

Fourth, you would have to set the limits such that you know for sure that nobody would be able to get an item that they can't use. If I grab a couple of IC allies at level 30 and go to grab a nice item, I will be pissed if I am not allowed to use it. There's nothing more obnoxious to me than the kind of game that makes challenging yourself completely pointless.

That's it for now, but I'm sure I can think of more reasons this is a bad idea.

>Here are several objections I have:
>
>First, it makes no logical sense. It's all game mechanics with
>no thematic structure. I hate it for that reason. How do you
>explain "Oh sorry, I'm not rank 30 yet, so I don't know how to
>wear that necklace" . It's absurd.

I think the thematic aspect would not suffer much if you have a response like: 'a nameoftheitem break down and fall on the floor as you try to wear it'.


>Second, I *like* having the possibility that lowbies can grab
>it. The only way I'd even it out is to make make +hit/dam
>affect spell damage/enemy save chance somehow, and then
>balance out the spells accordingly. But that's a big project.

I'm not sure of understanding what you mean here, could you explain a little bit more ?

>Third, if you did this it would wreak havoc with the item
>limits. Suddenly there would be nothing available at some
>levels and too much available at other levels.

Maybe... maybe not. Anyway, if it is so, would it be that bad if it helps newbie to have a little more success at pk?


>Fourth, you would have to set the limits such that you know
>for sure that nobody would be able to get an item that they
>can't use. If I grab a couple of IC allies at level 30 and go
>to grab a nice item, I will be pissed if I am not allowed to
>use it. There's nothing more obnoxious to me than the kind of
>game that makes challenging yourself completely pointless.

This sounds a bit like your only challenge in the game is too grab nice items... What about the challenge of making it more difficult to kill someone (especially newbies) in two round because you hold a +5 hit/dam sword?

My theory is people leave because they get frustrated at PK. Level requirement for gear is only an idea among others to try to find a solution to that. Maybe what you propose in objection no2 is better but unfortunatly, for now, I don't see how you see it works.

Is to just make things more fun and positive.

Honestly game balance isn't the main issue IMHO, it's just that the game lacks that viral "something to talk about" quality.

Don't worry about retention right now, worry about attraction then cater your retention to the real things that cause people to lose interest.

Not sure about what you stated.

You think people mainly leave for another reason than because they're unsuccessfull at pking or survive ganking against them? Yes exploring and interacting with other is part of the fun but being able to pk someone is something huge for the 'something to talk about'. And I'm not sure that having the feeling the game is unbalanced has little impact.

Also, I'm not saying that we shouldn't worry about attraction but not caring about retention seems a big mistake to me: what's the use of bringing customers in if they don't stay?

I'm very curious to know what you think are the 'real things that cause people to lose interest'?

People lose at a lot of games without throwing in the towel.

I think part of the problem with CF is people emphasize "winning" too strongly - as if having Tikar-esque top tier power-houses is the only way to enjoy the game. It needn't be that way, that level is only attainable by years and years of devotion that casual gamers will not put into a not-for-profit-run text-based game.

Let go of that and make it less about that and more about how to have fun without having a 95% PK ratio.

Edited to add : Losing is only a big deal in games where the only purpose of the game is to win. CF is a role-playing game, there can potentially be so much more to it than simple PK stats and epeen measuring.

You definitly have a good point by saying 'make it more about RP than PK'. But the question is how do you do that in CF? I mean the game is mostly about fighting. Cabals are about fighting someone and even if you're not in a cabal you will have to fight (especially if you're a wizard) sooner or later unless you spend your life at the Eternal Star. I might be wrong but, because of the harshness of pk, many consider CF a niche game and the most satisfying part of it is to land kills.

The only way I see to change this mentality and put more emphasis on RP would be to allow players to become not pkable by using a command that put you in state like below lvl 11. But I doubt this will ever happen...

So if you have no choice than being pkable, I think it would be better to balance things by using lvl req for gear and make sure that nobody can kill someone in 2 rounds.

I can't remember the last character that DIDN'T have at least a piece of it!

If this is you, quit bitching about how, me wearing Midnight Dragon armor is ruining it for new players.

The last suit I had, I got wearing a basic regear set and killing a guy with a full suit.

The ####'s laying around half the time.

I never saw it discussed on this forum and even if I asked gabe@qhcf.net to send me a password few times, I still don't have one...

>I never saw it discussed on this forum and even if I asked
>gabe@qhcf.net to send me a password few times, I still don't
>have one...

Huh? Why don't you just create an account if you don't have one?

bsdvbs

I have an account and only one email adress. When I try to enter a new username, I have a message telling me something like my email adress is already used.

What do you think of the idea 'level req for gear use' DurNominator?

Who are you trying to attract? New players or old players?

Maybe I am reading this wrong but there seems like a lot of criteria to offer an "Official" idea here when the players have been throwing ideas out there left and right for years.

What would make someone who fit the above criteria's ideas any better than the next?

Not trying to be negative, but this was an immediate turn off for me when I read it.

As far as who I was trying to attract, it would be anyone and everyone who wanted to help out. Making someone actually do something in order to get a sneak peek at some things to come and to help us brainstorm some ideas of what to do with certain things is all about getting people who will actually follow through. Believe it or not, even if there is no official response, we (as a collective group of volunteers) see all of the ideas that are posted (almost anywhere) and at least give it some thought. Sorry if my post turned you off, I'm just trying to make CF as a whole better (with the overall goal of this specific campaign being attracting new players).

Nae-nae

In that three players get some sort of vote or official input? I'm not sure what you're trying to do here and I'm just trying to understand.

n/t

I'm sure it's a swell idea.

Weeds out the people who aren't really interested in participating and gives you a flavor for their writing style and background.

How does it accomplish this again?

The three who have posted will have an email tomorrow, look out for it! Also, be sure to check the officials for some brainstorming on what is to come!