you guys ease the chore of ranking and skill improvements. Maybe an email list to opt in to or something? I'd love to play but at this point CF requires too much time for the unnecessary. A lower playerbase only contributes to the work of CF.

This isn't a Blame The Imms post or anything like that. I just can't devote the necessary time required to nominally compete regarding things like:

1) Ranking
2) Skill improvements
3) Cabal inductions

but I would really like to play. I'm sure there are even more people just like me who would like to see some of the tedium relaxed even more.

The Imm staff has made quite a few adjustments in the past two years but it just isn't enough (for me to feel capable of contributing and enjoying the game). And I obviously wouldn't make this post unless I was serious or seriously enjoy the game. I am serious and CF is my favorite game - I dislike that I can't really play it any longer.

I look forward to the day of 2X Exp up to level 40 and skill learning bonus...

Have fun!

The Forsaken(z)

Well, I don't have much time to play myself and haven't had that time for a while now. Family, kids, work, all that. But I pretty much always have one character in cabal (of my choosing) and stick with that char for a long while. Sometimes for over a year. Typically, that gives you a lot of interactions, a lot of opportunity to discover different tactics, brush up on the area knowledge, etc. Admittedly, I also have an uncaballed something on the back burner, just for the real down times or when I get tired of the primary. Just don't rank up fast or stay in the sweet spot for the build for a while and don't be a goody so you can kill pretty much anyone you want. My login times are probably for an hour on average and I usually get about three logins a week. My current cabal hero has enough obs/expl/imm xp left over to choose Ehren, with the edges I wanted already on him. I fully intend to con or age-die and really don't mind the slow progress. I got inducted when I was level 35 and playing for a couple of months. And I don't mind. Really.

The big problem that I see is CF has tons of fairweather players. I bet if everyone was limited to one caballed char you wouldn't have these retarded swings from Fort O'clock to Empire O'clock etc...obviously I can't tell how many people do this but I'm sure there's more than one.

One cabal char per IP/account/etc would be awesome.

>One cabal char per IP/account/etc would be awesome.

I usually don't have two caballed chars. But I almost always have an explorer and a real character. Once in a while I'll stick my explorer in Herald or something. But I don't play fairweather, and I usually try not to even play them on the same day.

I don't think what I do causes any harm to the CF environment, and it makes it more fun for me.

Ya, wouldn't care if some guy had one here.

I don't hate this idea, but that seems difficult to enforce. Ultimately I think it leads to more griping. As a player however, I'm starting to like the automation in the empire model more and more.

I'd say one character period. Or maybe one character over rank 14 (i.e. where warriors get bash and defense caps stop). Otherwise when the situation is unfavorable I just log off my caballed guy and log in my level 15 uncaballed bash spec.

I'm a bigger fan of one caballed character at a time.

Mainly because what if I roll a strict explore char. Let's say Utility/Defense shifter. I end up getting cheetah and komodo with a findable and readily acquirable sleek set. Now, basically, this means I can kill pretty much any mob in the game solo. So I explore, kill mobs, etc, etc, etc.

But after 3-4 months of that, I get bored. I want caballed interaction.

I don't think it's right to tell me I have to delete that explore character if I want to have another character above 15.

However, as stated above, I AM a big fan of one caballed character at a time. Makes me kind of sick to see players who have a BATTLE hero, FORT hero and EMPIRE up-and-comer all at the same time.

on ice, is if someone uses the explore character to hunt for their lich or mummy items.

A lack of sportsmanship is the main problem, imo.

I don't see why "not having much time to devote" is relevant here. That is to say why is the status quo "worse" for you as a low-hours-per-day player than it is for a high-hours-per-day player?

You and the high-hours guy are going to have to spend the same amount of time ranking. Your skills are going to improve at the same rate per hour-played.

Cabal inductions and empowerment are certainly more difficult, but if you're smart about cabal choice you can mitigate that. Choose a cabal that either has auto-induct (Empire) or one whose leader(s) are online during the time slot when you expect to play. Can also make use of in-game notes. "Hey imms and leader characters: I'm pledging X but don't expect to be able to play more than about an hour every other day. If you can work with me as far as induction that'd be greatly appreciated."

Because spending 20 hours on dullness is vastly different when you can play 20 hours a week as opposed to playing 20 hours a month.

Would you log on a game knowing that over the course of a month it won't be enjoyable? It's tolerable when you can play a lot and push through it, not so much in my case.

Also, my enjoyment of a build wanes over the span of 3 months. At no point in 14 years have I ever wanted to play a long lived character. I'm glad you can do it, I just find it boring, just as boring as a character's first several hours.

Played it, did it, done. Ready for the next interesting role and build idea for some 'newness' and 'shine'.

Not only that, but the game caters to 1.5+ hour long sessions. Semi-efficient ranking groups (who likes to get one level or even half a level?), regathering generic wands, gold, cabal wars, etc. Why not minimize some of the less enjoyable things?

I'm not asking to start at level 30 with 100% skills. Lowbie pking is fun when it is available. I like easing into a class by learning the useful skills from 1 to 51. I would simply like the ability to ascend ranks and have skills improve at a faster rate. Increasing those two rates really wouldn't impact anyone else from enjoying level 17 or 21 or whatever else.

>Because spending 20 hours on dullness is vastly different when you can play 20 hours a week as opposed to playing 20 hours a month.

Not sure I see the difference. 30 hours of drudgery is 30 hours of drudgery. Whether I pack those 30 hours into 10 days or 30 days, I'm still bored for 30 hours.

You only want to play characters 200 hours at a time and you're pissed that at least 30 hours of those 200 has to be spent not being able to PK the way you want to. You want an instant PK machine with as little "build up" time as possible. Hence my comment that your ideal world would involve being able to roll level 30 characters with skill percentages about where they'd normally be for a rank 30 character with 30 hours played. You want POS.

This isn't WoW you don't need to be maxed out on levels a week after you start a character.

You can argue it doesn't, fine, but even when I lowbie pk those first 30 hours and 30 ranks are nothing short of drudgery to me.

30 hours is over a month of playing for me. Sometimes two months.

I rather like levels 35 to 51. That's when cabal wars really start to pick up, for one. And balanced pk.

The game would also see less pendulum swings, imo.



I haven't played WoW and I do not intend to. It's a pretty game but the time required there is just gross. Along with game mechanics. Gross.

>those first 30 hours and 30 ranks are nothing short of
>drudgery to me.

So what do you want, the ability to roll a level 30 character with perfected skills?

>30 hours is over a month of playing for me. Sometimes two
>months.

If 30 hours = 2 months then the rest of that character's life should represent another three years worth of "non-drudgery" time.

someone wants to play the same thing for 3 years :P That would be horrible to me.

Builds only have so many tactical options. I'm not one to press the same button again and again and again...

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Does it make me crazy that, even with my own play time limited, if there was an 'earn half XP' flaw with no reward for picking, I would pick it almost every time?

I would still like to play and compete accordingly. That is currently a very poor option at the current state and replaces fun with tedium.

I'm all about you selecting the Exp % best for your character. I would choose 200% to your 50%. I do not see a problem with either.

>Does it make me crazy that, even with my own play time
>limited, if there was an 'earn half XP' flaw with no reward
>for picking, I would pick it almost every time?

The fact that you enjoy skill practice makes me so sad because I know it means I'll never get anywhere pointing out how terrible it is. It's the one area (even including sleeks, which is the only other system I really, seriously dislike) where I really doubt your judgment as a designer.

As for the original post. Jeez dude, it's pretty easy to rank these days. And cabals are always a crapshoot and that's up to the players anyway. My current char's induction took five minutes from the first effort (sending a tell) to waltzing on in. That's atypical, but really, getting into cabals fast has always been about picking one that needs people and getting lucky with finding a leader.

He's talking about "accidentally" leveling up due to cabal retrievals, commerce/observation/quest/exploration/imm XP when you wanted to stay at one particular level and pk/rp. Let alone the XP you get when you kill a mob for something you want (wands, eq, preps, whatever).

I just like to level up slowly. Interact with people at different ranks and such. Build my noteriety instead of becoming a Hero on day 1.

It would be neat to select an experience bonus at creation though, so everyone could advance at the pace they like or something heh.

>Does it make me crazy that, even with my own play time
>limited, if there was an 'earn half XP' flaw with no reward
>for picking, I would pick it almost every time?

Isn't that called "neutral"? Or more specifically, "neutral wood-elf ranger"? :p

I like the system the way it is now that I've gotten more time to myself to play, but i can see the point of the original poster. Only advice I can think to give is to play a human shifter. High int, no xp penalty.

Were the status quo to change, the "reward" of reaching level 51 becomes lessened further because you get there too quickly and don't value the time you've already sunk into playing a character.

Skill practice, no matter how you word it, is painful. Sure there are ways to improve it faster but those are tricks for veterans and not new players. New players probably think their 75%, 3 practices spent, fire giant trip is fine but when they lose a lot you think most are going to figure out how to spam practice for 20+ hours or just delete or be like Forsaken and just say "screw it"?

You put the vine in for a reason :P

There's a built-in system to improve skill learning when there are lots of people on. We've had double exp times and the playerbase grows. For an experiment, turn on 50% skill exp gains for a WEEK and broadcast it. I *guarantee* there will be more people on.

And wouldn't that make everyone happier? :)

More people to interact with, to group with, to pk with, to enjoy the game with. It should be a priority not a "hey it's July 4th, why not".

You know there enough people to play the game because we randomly see peaks above 50+ people. You can try to market it or just make the game more enjoyable across the board. Fixing this would make it fun for veterans (less "ok I'm going to go spam weapons for a few hours") and for newbies ("Hey look, I'm learning a lot!").

Mix it up, try new stuff. Spice up CF life a bit. DO IT! :)

Oh hey, there's that thread on the marketing board > : - 3

...happier players. I can tell someone that my old original Nintendo is an good game system but when a happy engaged friend says "It's awesome, you need to get one!"

There's a reason people are called veterans here, it's because we enjoy the game but we're bitter ;) I don't shake some friend saying "OMG YOU NEED TO PLAY CF!" I say "It's cool *but* well, there's a really high ceiling of time, lots of players have played for several years and it takes some luck, and there's this thing called A/B/S...it's basically the fantasy version of the EVE of the past in text form." You get the idea. If I knew that I could play on every Tuesday to get 100% bonus learning so my spamming of weapons isn't terrifyingly boring, I'd be way happier and I think everyone would be. There'd be way more people on which makes for good marketing because people are happy.

And I'm not asking for instant gratification (although a game where everyone had 100% would be interesting), but it sure as hell makes it more enjoyable.

Xp isn't my biggest problem, skill learning sure is. SO tedious, even when you know the tricks.

I don't see how this would help, people would just go off and spam skills the whole time. I think if they upped the learning from traveling in groups of three it would help. And before someone tells me it already does, it's not enough.

If he hasn't done that already, I don't think having a system like this is unreasonable.

Sample Week:

1st Day -
Skill learn bonus for random 2 hr block
XP learn bonus for random 1 hr block (mutually exclusive)

2nd Day -
XP learn bonus for set 4 hr block

3rd Day -
Skill learn bonus for set 4 hr block
XP learn bonus for random 1 hr block (mutually exclusive)

4th Day -
XP AND Skill learn bonus for random 2 hr block

5th Day -
Skill learn bonus for random 1 hr block
XP learn bonus for set 2 hr block, random 1 hr block (both mutually exclusive with skill learn)

6th Day -
XP AND Skill learn bonus for set 2 hr block
XP learn bonus for random 2 hr block
Skill learn bonus for random 2 hr block (mutually exclusive with other random block)

7th Day -
XP AND Skill learn bonus for random 2 hr block
XP learn bonus for set 4 hr block
Skill learn bonus for set 2 hr block (mutually exclusive with other set bonus)

Edited to add some relevant parts of said system:
8 hrs of set skill learning. This would allow players who find tremendous value in skill grinding an outlet to log on at these times. Of course scheduling becomes a problem with work etc, but it's over a couple days so you'll still be able to get in the time you need.

12 hrs of set double XP. Not really else needs to be said.

9 hrs of random skill learn bonus. More hrs than set. Rewards players who play a lot because only they will get the full benefit of these random bonuses.

9 hrs of random double XP. Allows players who play alot to gain the benefit, though not as much as the skill learning (which is done for a reason).

You could do this for a sample week and tweak accordingly.

Obviously, that's a #### load of coding and I wouldn't even deign to ask you for this.

But a system LIKE this in whatever easy way you can code it would probably not only give you a tremendous amount of data to use at your leisure AND boost player numbers at least by several.

the 35% xp bonus when player counts are low, which scales downward until I think you hit 50 players. But when you hit 50, you get a skill learning bonus kicking in, so at any given time there is a bonus to either skill learning or exp.

Granted, it's not like the 100% xp or the 25% skill learning, but they are nice little perks.

I wouldn't mind having more frequent intervals of either, but making them shorter when they are on. An all day double xp for a holiday is really nice, but I'd rather see 6 four hour blocks spread across the week really. More people can benefit from that I feel like.

I like the ideas of putting in some random ones too. Log in and see current skill bonus, I won't mind practicing for a bit or ranking for a bit if it is xp bonus. These all tend to benefit sub hero chars, which I am fine with. I'd like a Thera with a PB of 60+ and maybe have 25+ people in hero range pk. That would be pretty awesome. Course it would mean I spend most of my time as a ghost, but still, would be fun.

I mean.. am I the only one to realize that skill practice has gotten infinitely easier in recent years? Skill learn is AWESOME. We get bonuses to skill increases depending on the size of the playerbase. We can learn weapons without ever even wielding them.

I mean.. what is it going to take before we all collectively say "Ok, skill practice is good now". Are we going to have to default to 100%'s across the board?

You know as well as I do that if they bump skill learning by 50% permanently across the board, people will still be complaining 6 months from now asking for another boon.

What's the solution, besides "More More More!"

Seriously.

Still, they is a slowly dying playerbase that needs to be considered as well. And new players aren't satisfied with what CF is right now or CF would have tons of n00bs.

So what we have to do is continue to improve/enhance/work to make CF a place that can survive and thrive for years to come.

That I'd probably try out a dumb race again, like an orc or equivalent, but skill learn does jack #### for them (maybe 50% their entire life if you're lucky) and you need to practice weapons and other things to be halfway decent.

There's a ton of things I stop and practice, there's no way you can do it all in groups - especially given more exp bonuses. I'd rather spend more time actually having fun then practicing, spamming, and gathering preps.

If you've ever stopped from a group to go somewhere and spam something mindlessly, you know exactly how f-ing boring it is and how many of us just trigger that process so it's painless as possible. Some newbie would never know where or how.

Fiiiix it.

It's still pretty brutal to learn skills on int less than 20. Supposedly races below 18 learn at an 18 rate or something like that but it just doesn't feel that way. In the past 12 months I've tried a storm axe, dwarf paladin, fire shaman, cloud druid, and fire pole/mace and learning skills for all of them but the fire giant was mind numbing. I'm not even talking about secondary skills, I'm talking major weapons and class specific.

n/t

nt

administration, roleplay, and risk/reward would be friggin awesome.

>administration,

That assumes the current administration would stick around. I would get tired of dealing with cheaters (because there is no reason not to cheat other than the threat of banning which any proxy can fix). I'd probably stop responding to people who felt they got denied/banned unfairly, because it's just not worth my time.

>roleplay,

I'm pretty sure this would diminish, since every character is potentially a throwaway. Or in your case, log in for a couple hours over a week, then delete and try something else. At that point you really have nothing invested in your character(s).

>and risk/reward

What risk? Even deletion of your character doesn't set you back that far...only a new set of gear.

>would be friggin awesome.

You are entitled to that opinion, and I'm entitled to disagree.

Got the kids down to bed and was actually able to make some nice progress on a new idea.

I'm fine with the status quo, but I can sympathize with people who don't have a lot of free time on their hands. Maybe something along the lines of a one-shot burst of 50% bonus exp you can use once a week for two hours? It would go by real time, so if you log off and the two hours runs out, then you don't get it again until next week. Maybe the trade-off could be that the anti-hoarding code kicks in sooner if you use it, or while you're using it, you get reduced skill improvements.

From your perspective, I could see the problem of heroes, cabal leaders, etc leveling alts and not focusing on their mains. Another concern would be cheapening the game somewhat by easy leveling.

As a player, my goal is to reach level 51 because that's when I stop worrying about mob deaths and start exploring like crazy, get into pk and cabal wars more, and enjoy not having to worry about the grind tedium. Having more people reach it because the burden of leveling is mitigated somewhat makes the hero ranks more fun for me. Also, the people who have limited time and have always wanted to try that wood-elf healer or arial druid would have more of an incentive to do so.

I don't know. I see both sides of the argument here.

Maybe it's because we are getting old and aren't of the new generation that want instant rewards.

The only part of getting to hero that I have an problem with is the 40-51 as the areas to do this are slim and easy for heroes to check and pick people off. But that all adds to the great feeling you get when you finally do reach 51.

I agree completely. Sometimes what prevents from rolling up a certain character type is the thought of the skill practice that I just don't want to do. For a class like invokers I could see how this might be a bad thing, but for other classes it'd be great.