Two quick things that don't merit being real announcements, and that 99% of you are doing (or more importantly weren't doing) anyway.

1. It's now a formalized rule that you can't have two (or more) characters in the same cabal at the same time. Nothing good ever came of this, and it's a pretty inconsiderate thing to do when many cabals have limited rosters, anyway. If we catch you having two characters in the same cabal we reserve the right to boot both of them out.

2. Warcries are supposed to be inspirational phrases. There seems to be a subset of the playerbase that always picks non-meaningful "screams" like 'GRAAAAAGH!!!!'. Those characters are not getting the most out of their warcries, and it makes me sad. See 'help warcry' for a refresher.

You know...if you want to go hard core...you could make it so one player can only have one caballed character period.

>You know...if you want to go hard core...you could make it so
>one player can only have one caballed character
>period.

Good idea.

Actually, this was what several imms echoed when we were discussing it. I think it's kind of unfair/hard to be allies with a group of people one minute and then switch over and be fighting them the next. You'll know little stuff like where they hide to recover and what their normal preps/gear are, their raiding strategies, etc.

That said, I'm ok with this babystep rule formalization for now. However, I agree with you and wish people would stick to one caballed char a time.

I can't sign off on only one char at a time because if I get frustrated with my mortal character I have to log off, roll a newbie, and kill fleshies for awhile, and then promptly forget the name of the newbie and let it autodelete. :P

I USED to roll many lowbies and alternate playing them until one
inspired me, and then drop the others and play out the one no matter
how painful it was. Looking back I think it would have been better
for my sanity to go back to one of the lowbies now and again. Now
I lean toward playing one no matter what, sadly this skips the
inspiration part so my characters either go the route of not being
spiffy at all or I let them develop as it goes and run with in game
inspirations. This is a BAD idea in cf by the way, since 'you' can't
decide to go goodie with your orc without much outside influence. :)

So while *I* don't do it anymore I can see letting people play more
than one character, but I 100% agree with one caballed character at
a time. Maybe code an ip check with an imm override if someone explains that thier buddy/brother/co-worker etc.. is playing a
character and they are in different cabals AND the imms decide the
players aren't being assclowns etc...

And while we are here maybe I'll go back to rolling 5-6 lowbies and seeing which one 'sticks' Hahaha. (don't worry the ones that don't stick never make it to 20th level so it's not an issue as near as
I can tell.)

I think this announcement is the best thing yet for this game... maybe it's just me but I found that I only have TIME to play 1 character at a time, and I play bout 2 -3 hours a day on average once I rolled one... who ever play more than 1 character is just having too too much time on their hand and enjoys masochism... seriously.. spam practice skill sets for one character is already like a life sentence.. now there are players who are willing to spam practice skills for two or more characters at a time is just mind boggling!!! I think the imms are quite easy on this rule, if it was me.. I would rather our players play only one character at a time... I promise you'll get much more out of that one character when you wholeheartedly invest yourself in it than having to divide that inspiration in half for two characters... just my 2 cents.

My first thought was "isn't this common sense?"

...But, I am proven wrong about that one all the time.

I know I've done it, but mostly when I should have just deleted a char I got bored with. I hear ya though, it's not my thing.

What about Empire.

can we stretch it to, no more than 1 per sect, and if you have 2 you they must be in different sects, and cannot both be heros. To establish a break in sect leadership possibilities.

I don't see a problem with having a lvl 51 warrior in blade sect, and like a lvl 35 shaman in the divine.

The rule especially applies to Empire due to Empire politics. I can think of a ton of advantages I could give myself if I had multiple chars in different Empire sects (even without them being heros).

Empire is probably the worst cabal to have two characters in considering its player driven promotion system. How tempting would it be to say things like "Oh I've been meaning to promote X guy (my alt) but 'don't wake at the same time', can you hit him when you see him?" Probably best to just not have that temptation out there.

If you have two characters in the same cabal, they should never even know each others names. That goes without saying.

I'm just going on the guidelines of, two characters, never interacting, never gaining from the other, and not affecting cabal politics on purpose. Does that seem wrong?

Granted I'm a bit of a cynic, but I find it hard to believe that people who regularly play two characters in the same cabal always handle situations like that 100% on the up 'n up.

Take this scenario for example:
Player is playing Sam and Joe in Fortress.
Everyone in Fortress knows Sam and Joe.
Fortress people occasionally talk about or reference Sam or Joe.

It's awkward that the only Fortress guy who doesn't know Sam is Joe, and the only Fortress guy who doesn't know Joe is Sam.

It creates a weird dynamic that is difficult to smoothly handle IC, since (especially over time), it really doesn't make sense, to me at least, that one guy in cabal knows little to nothing about a guy that everyone else is very familiar with, all rather inexplicably.

Yes, there are ways of justifying or rationalizing it all, but again, it's just never simple and best to avoid as far as I'm concerned.

We're talking about Empire, which isn't so happy go lucky as Fortress. Most Imperials avoid each other, especially other sects.

And from my knowledge, no one talks about either of my Empire characters to me or each other. So I hope I can be immune to this new rule, since I play by the former rules and am an honest player.(shout out to Twist!)

anyways, its different than Scion, which funnyone abused and I only have ONE elite spot in a different sect of another. So I'm not in a place to help the other char. even if I could, or giving special advantages, i.e. cheating...

So am I forced to push one over to Tribby, or just leave the cabal? Not really helping the RP here... Being an Enlilth guy in the Empire is also the bees knees, and I really don't want to delete.

and not letting it be discovered later. I'd really like to continue the paths i've set for the different characters.

You could potentially end up in an awkward spot. It's easy to say that if one of your characters ends up with a leader position, that you'd just delete the other one, but what if you end up with one being a sect leader and the other one a tatted empoweree. It becomes harder to decide which one is "more valuable."

Just try to remember that it's not like you're being singled out for punishment, it's just that a certain part of the playerbase would (and has) abused this sort of thing, and now there has to be a blanket rule.

It's like everything in life...a few douchebags ruin it for everyone.

You are not immune to this rule. Two senior imms (and a heroimm) have explained why this is a bad idea, especially for Empire.

Twist and Enlilth supported it without any hesitation.

Please see HELP RULES for clarification.

I didn't expect to be immune, but I hope I'll at least be granted some time to figure out what to do. Or at least what you'll force me to do, because I don't really know how this will work.

Huh. I'm kinda shocked this is a hard choice knowing your two characters, but I'll note you in game with some options.

How is this fair? Hey we are changing the rules after 15 years, if you happen to have two characters in the same cabal you have to #### one over? Why wouldn't they be grandfathered in, you know kind of like how rules changes like this would work in the real world?

Adventure, politics and war await you in this life of swords, sorcery, deception, and honor. With 16 diverse, balanced classes, 200+ unique areas, deep RP, limited items, and xp-based PK, we've expanded, adapted, and improved for 15+ years. 100% free!

Also, rules shifting like the sands of time!

:P

To my knowledge*, this effected two players. One had already been caught cheating via passing gear through the cabal pit (another thing that can be hard to avoid) and the other recently had about 4 caballed characters...THREE of them in the same cabal.

However, as you can tell by the majority of posts to this thread, most players were already following this rule and understand why it's important. At the end of the day, when I'm wearing a game administrator cap, I see a TON of pitfalls to having two characters in a cabal and no benefits.

*I have not gone on some crazy witch hunting trying to screw over current characters. So, there may be more. I'm just trying to communicate the rule so the very few players that were/are doing it will stop.

... I've had alts at the same time in Empire. And that IS a treacherous thing. How can my lvl 30 black sect AP NOT know about the Emperor? (Who is my main?) Ofc the Emperor char doesn't need to know about a lvl 30 AP why'd he give a ####? But it is very troublesome. If you're not inclined to cheat it forces you to really think things through as it's very easy to say/do something that could affect your alt positivly without thinking, how easy would it not be to abuse that? No, Empire is defently the cabal that needs this restriction the most, and Scion. (Beacuse of limited slots)

Not that I even have time to have 2 characters at all, but I can still legally have 12 orcs rolled up at once! Mwahah!

On a serious note, how likely would a similar regulation regarding # of characters in DIFFERENT cabals be? I could see an argument for having only one caballed character PERIOD, but I also have always been one to typically have a primary character, then a lowbie/my next planned character for when I don't have a lot of time/focus, and want to dink around more than kill 4hrs of my life, as I tend to.

Anything beyond two caballed characters (and as mentioned, perhaps even including), and I feel there's really no feasable way you'd be giving all of them the attention they should. Even for someone like myself, I'd probably just resort to having a caballed char, then any other char I had, I'd hang around as a pledge or cabal friend until the other died.

I can't really think of a reason why anyone would bother having multiple orcs at the same time.

Orc at heart and all. More superpowerz for the orcses!

Good that you announce this, though I think you should have made the announcement before starting to cripple people for making aaargh-style warcries.. since you can't really expect people to re-read all helpfiles each time they roll a new char, and they used to be fine before..

But not a big deal, really. And you evil after all :)

Actually, best I can tell it's been like that for quite some time. Really, I don't care about warcries very much at all. When I became more active recently I noticed some of the crippled warcry judgments and the common trend and thought, 'Huh, I wonder if these mortals even know about this expectation?'

That said, upon reflecting on it I agree with the imm pattern of wanting warcries to be actual English and comprehendable. I just try to notice places where the mortals and staff seem to be on different pages and try to communicate it. So I made the helpfile really explicit.

A warcry question it is.

What about if my character's name is Graagh...then the warcry's topical. :)

If we get rewarded for a warcry, is it ever a good idea to change the warcry? Assuming that the warcry was boosted for its inspirational qualities, would we risk having it lowered again if something less inspirational was shouted?

Sure, if someone didn't think the new one was as good, they could mod it down.

Most of my warriors charcaters (though there has't been one in over 2 years) had 2 or 3 warcries that I used against certain enemies, or a time of day etc.

I had two occassions when the warcry 1 got me bumped up in terms of power and then later another Imm or maybe even the same Imm notched it down when I used one of the others.

It is a shame because it leads you into using only one warcry and losing an RP opportunity by switching them up as you are worried that someone at, that day and that time doesn't like that version.

I kind of love the idea of using different warcries, if the RP was smooth/solid. However, I can also see where if an imm was just glancing through warcries they would miss that subtlety. Out of curiosity, did you explain that in your role? I'm not saying the imm still wouldn't judge you down, but they might be more likely to buy into the "plan" as a whole if they knew to look for it. (Note: Even if it was in the role, it's still possible the immortals judging the warcry wouldn't read the whole role...but it's a start.)

Coming up with an inspriational warcry is a chore.


I seriously doubt that imms are actually rewarding good warcries at all as the helpfile indicates.

Non sensical noises make the most logical choice for warcries yet they are gainst the rules.

Can there be a choice just to not set your warcry and have it be generic and left untouched by the imms?

>Coming up with an inspriational warcry is a chore.

As a player, I kind of agree. On the other hand, so is a role and a description...and in the end, it fleshes out the character for me and I'm glad I did it.

>I seriously doubt that imms are actually rewarding good
>warcries at all as the helpfile indicates.

We are. I know I spotcheck them routinely, and more often than not someone has beaten me to it.

>
>Non sensical noises make the most logical choice for warcries
>yet they are gainst the rules.

First of all, it's not against the rules. Unless you make it something that's offensive and against our rules, you get nothing but a less effective skill than if you did something thoughtful. This is a perfect gameplay consequence. Your warcry isn't inspiring...this is reflected by the affects. Which, I would argue, there has never been a warcry (judged super awesome or super sucky) that has had a huge mechanical impact on the character. If you want to continue to have your warcry be AAAAARRRRGGH!!!, then go for it. My only goal was to communicate/remind you about the expectations so that you're not doing it blindly.

Second of all, screaming noises might be a logical way to start a battle (I know I like to scream AAAAAAARRRGGGH!! before I kick someone's ass), but it is not a warcry in the sense that CF is defining it. A CF warcry is supposed to be a battle chant, and in the (very few) fantasy books I've read the CF implementation is pretty much on par.

Finally, I don't think there's any combination of race/class that can't have a well done warcry. I'd say orcs come the closest to your "logical" argument, but a clever orc that yells something understandable is still going to rally his clan better. Further, some of the best warcries I've judged recently have been orcs.


>Can there be a choice just to not set your warcry and have it
>be generic and left untouched by the imms?

No.

Their warcries almost always come out humorous because of mino speech. Hard to be inspirational or intimidating when you yell I will bash you into oblivion or something since it will sound like bath you into oblithion. Especially since a mino only sees the actual text, not what everyone else sees, so they don't know how it sounds to others really.

But those are minotaurs, and everyone loves mino speech. They should all take cry of thunder just so they can share the humorous war cries with the area. :)

>
>Second of all, screaming noises might be a logical way to
>start a battle (I know I like to scream AAAAAAARRRGGGH!!
>before I kick someone's ass), but it is not a warcry in the
>sense that CF is defining it. A CF warcry is supposed to be a
>battle chant, and in the (very few) fantasy books I've read
>the CF implementation is pretty much on par.
>

The problem I have with that type of inspiring warcry is it feels like it is more suited for group battles as a rallying cry before leading a force into combat. That really isn't the situation for CF. For CF a nonsensical scream that is potentially frightening / demoralizing to an enemy seems more appropriate for the standard 1 v 1 or small group ambush type encounters that are most common.

Also, if warcrys are suppose to be inspiring maybe the skill should be changed to provide a small + morale bonus to group members if they hear it. :-)

n/t

There's nothing sadder than a sad demon. I fixed mine for you. :)