As the cf population ages more and more of us are finding ourselves faced with limited access to CF, weather that is in terms of absolute time we can play or what times of the day we can play.

Being in a cabal I would argue is the second biggest driver behind all RP and PK interactions in the game (alignment would be number 1).

Getting into a cabal as someone with limited playing times has become almost systemically impossible for a fair number of people.

I say systemically because at the root of our current induction processes is the fact that for each cabal there is just a handful of people with the actual ability to induct you and you have to play the game at the same time as them in order for that to happen. The weakness in this system is that if you can't be on at the same time as the gate keeper then you are #### out of luck.

The resolution to this problem is to change the nature of th gatekeeping mechanism to not be individuals (or you could just icrease the number of gatekeepers several times but that doesn't change the fact that that system relies on imms to make gatekeepers and the same root problem of people not being on at the same time applies).

I want to propose a new induction system for all cabals that are not empire or scion based on recomendation points. You acquire X number of points and you are automatically inducted. If the imms want you could make your required amount vary, perhaps a storm paladin only needs 10 points to get into fort but an assassin needs 30 to reflect a cabals bias towards certain individuals (or an imm could manually change it to reward/punish RP).

You could earn recomendation points in 2 ways, the first would be to get recomended by a member of the cabal. You could make all cabal members recomendations equal or maybe you want people who have been in the cabal < 10 hours to carry less weight or base it on any other dynamic under the sun. The second way you could get recomendation points would be to be involved in cabal raids and retrievals with members of the cabal and you could get points the same time you get the cabal xp for those events.


This would be positive for players because it encourages applciants to interact with more active cabal members. It reduces the headaches of trying to get in touch with one or two individuals. And finally it allows a cabal leader to actually lead instead of being an interview/induct machine.


so does anyone have any thoughts on the idea?

I think you've thought it out well and addressed many of the major issues.

However, it does have some drawbacks, and that's that you will have to spend time getting recommendations. This could be just as bad, or worse, in terms of time spent getting in, particularly if playes are bored with constantly being chased for the recommendations.

Also, it's not really within evey character's role to get recommendations.

I think between making the recomendation command system and still leaving the induct command on the leader you can account for significantly more players then the current system allows.


The one drawback that I forsee and we couldn't tell until implementing the system is what affect it would have on cabal playing times. While theoretically decentralizing who you seek for induction should alieviate login bunching (by allowing people opportunities to enter without playing a specific time slot) you could see certain time slots achieve critical mass. So if there is already 10 people on at a certain time regularily you might see a sharp spike in recomendations because people can just go person to person for recs and hammer them out whereas before even if 50 cabal members were online you were limited by how many the leader could speak with at once.

I think for the most part it would diffuse the concentration of cabal play across all time slots but bandwagoning could be an issue potentially (at least people would be band wagoning more because they like the cabal as opposed to their perception of ease of induction since that happens a lot already).

recced by a player, or recced by the tara'bal or something by aiding in a retrieval etc.

Make outducting far more common.

It almost always means people just deleting. Once booted I think only an imm can bring you back in. It's hard to do that to another player unless he deserves it for repeated douchery.

I agree, getting in should be easy, but getting kicked out should not be. Tribunal has a demotion system sort of, empire does, but the others are pretty much you are in or out.

It's a cabal leaders job I think to not make it too hard to into a cabal, scion being the exception. Hopefully people in leader spots are pretty active (more than say an hour a week for example) so people who want to get into a cabal get the opportunity without too much wait. Not saying you should get in just cause you pledged, if people don't put any effort into getting into a cabal, they don't really care, and the char almost always just becomes an auto.

The number of people who play all hours of all days are dwindling, a large number of people play like just MWF 6-8. If no leaders are on MWF 6-8 then no cabal for that player. (the same is also true of empowerment and why a large number of people avoid empowerment, the same you are stuck conforming to someone elses schedule you may or may not be able to accomodate)


CF has to move away from anything where the gate keeper is one individual unless they can garuntee that one person will be accesable by everyone who would want their time. Since that is not a reasonable demand to place on a volunteer staff and user base the only option is to change the nature of the gatekeeping system itself.

Scion being the exception for most of the time...

And we do try to make it so the mortals who can induct are spread apart when it comes to playtime (i.e. we generally wouldn't make both Captain and Marshall of the Fortress early-morning-only players) unless it can't be avoided.

Empire, being largely self-governed, ends up with power swings due to the fact that, as Emperor, I'm sure not going to promote that guy that I never see to Dread Lord over the guy that is raiding beside me every night.

Nexus, by way of the Vote, often will have two mortals who play at the same time, but at least there the whole cabal gets to have a say on who they see as the best fit.

I respect the time and effort you imms put in as administrators but you(as a group) are have the same exact problem as the users when it comes to individuals can't be on all the time. And It is an issue that is getting tougher on the imm staff.

Its not an issue for every cabal and every player all the time. But it is a problem for a lot of players a lot of the time. Negative experiences also have a tendency to imprint on our memory more readily then positive ones.


Changing to my proposition is nothing but positive for everyone involved (except the guys who actually have to do the coding work).
-Imms don't get as much preassure on them and less complaining when people are having trouble finding a leader
-Leaders can be more then interview/induct robots and can actually be leaders
-People who play obscure time slots are more likely to get involved and play more.
-Individual cabal members have a more concrete way to contribute to the success/failure of their cabal.


You could even make a reverse of the recomendation command called condemnation, if a cabalmember doesn't approve of the actions of a cabal mate they can condemn them and then you ease the burden of policing the cabal from the imms and leader a bit as well. You may or may not want to automate booting but even something simple as showing the leader in that members command that some individuals are not viewed as kosher by their cabalmates they have a heads up to keep a closer eye on them.


This system is a win-win for everyone. Twist I would honestly want to know what parts of the current system are superior to this. There is a potential for abuse but everything has potential for abuse and logging is cheap.

I think this is a great idea really. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar for empowerment, but I realize that's a totally different barrel of monkeys.

I love this idea, but not for scion or empire.

Enough condemnations, you're out. base it on the number of current members (of your branch for outies).

This would make it so that leaders do not become the bad guy, and no individual will be responsible for weakening the cabal.

>Enough condemnations, you're out. base it on the number of
>current members (of your branch for outies).

So how many friends would I need to get into Battle to kick-out the sitting leader, so I can go back to playing my mage who is always getting his ass kicked by the sitting leader of Battle?

I'd call you paranoid, but I guess you've seen people try and do something like this before?

Are there even still groups of players large enough to accomplish something this douchy?

I'm not for this change, but this response just struck me as alittle unplausible.

>I'd call you paranoid, but I guess you've seen people try and
>do something like this before?
>
>Are there even still groups of players large enough to
>accomplish something this douchy?
>
>I'm not for this change, but this response just struck me as
>alittle unplausible.

There are many things that surprise me the lengths people will go to be douchy. Actually the way this is described I could do this completely solo and not break any rules, I just have to get X number of charaters into a cabal and demote anyone I don't like.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=4&topic_id=90146&mesg_id=90150&page=

And I kinda like that guy too.

nt