I kinda think it's starting to get out of control. I'd love to hear other people's opinion about this.

It's going to become an untenable situation soon. Eventually every character is going to need rewards to survive, which will continue the culture of entitlement, which will force the IMMs to give out more rewards.

I gotta believe Zulg, at least, knows this is getting bad.

Edited to add: If you guys hit the switch and got rid of role contests, ABS, and a whole slew of other imbalanced things, I'd totally donate 500$ to CF.

I generally wouldn't post a response to something like this, but what the hell I'll throw it out there. I've never really gotten any type of reward, but thats because Im terrible at figuring out whats worthy of being rewarded, something I've frequently asked for aid with, but seems nobody has the time to help a RP Artard.

Even though I generally rarely cabal, because i'm terrible at PK and generally done recieve much attention, sometime I rarely get more than 300 immxp for a role entry, which kinds of erks me because when I look at PBF files their roles are not anymore quality than some of my own yet they get 1250 immxp for the first entry or something stupid. Thats probably a bit of an exageration. Yet, even through never recieving any attention, stacking 20 edges from PK, any of that nonsense that most people, including me so long to experience, but dont. I still always crawl back, just let the cards fall where their thrown and let it be. The immortals have enough on their plates without having to worry about the newest bitch from the playbase.

Just gotta let some of this stuff go folks. Lets have some fun with it. If their too beast theres no law saying to cannot gank em with five friends!

YES IT IS I! THE LORD OF EXCESSIVE COMMA USAGE!

They are about the whats,where,why,whens, and hows of your character. Meaning who he is, what he does, Why he does it, How does he do it, and When does he do it. And seperates him by showing what he won't do, why he won't do it, why he doesn't do it this way versus doing it another way, and why he doesn't do something at/or during a certain time or a certain place.

That might help you get more from your roles. I get 1500 when I do this but I don't do it often because I'm lazy I just do a half assed role that gets me 1000. (I'd rather play the game and a 1k role generally shows who my character is enough for me to play enjoyably).

>Even though I generally rarely cabal, because i'm terrible at
>PK and generally done recieve much attention, sometime I
>rarely get more than 300 immxp for a role entry, which kinds
>of erks me because when I look at PBF files their roles are
>not anymore quality than some of my own yet they get 1250
>immxp for the first entry or something stupid. Thats probably
>a bit of an exageration.

Not to detract from the intent of your post, which I agree with, I thought I'd point out something to clear up some of the weird claims about role xp I've seen. It's extremely unlikely you've gotten 300 xp, or someone has gotten 1250, or other claims I've seen (150, 600.)

When roles are rated, they get 0, 500, 1000, 1500, or 2000xp based on the first chunk of role chapters that are read and rated. After that, the next time you have new chapters that are reviewed and rewarded, you will get 0, 400, 800, or 1200xp for those chapters.

For the past several years, this is the way it has been and it's very unlikely anyone reading your role would both be able to and willing to go to the trouble to give you a different amount of experience.

Just so it's out there...

I'd pay for CF rewards

... as long as no one else could.

Big money. Straight to a coder. No one needs to know.

I got paypal.

Any takers? No?

Hello?

This describes the gripe about who gets what shapeshifter forms, who gets what sleek wand locations, who gets what rolecontest awards, and in this thread, who even gets their questions answered on the forums.

To quote George Carlin, "####, piss, ####, cunt, cocksucker, ####er, and ####."

It's hard to have a meaningful conversation when everyone puts on their lids and digs into their entrenched positions and start lobbing loaded words at each other. Around here, even suggesting words like "whiner" and "conspiracy" shut down logical thought as effectively as invoking Hitler's name in a public policy debate.

TMNS highlighted a concern he had, but instead of creating a firestorm on the forums he should have engaged the imps in a more private discussion. Maybe on AIM, if he is in their inner circle (CONSPIRACY! FAVORITISM! OBAMACARE-LOVING COMMUNISTS! MUHAHAHA!) or at the very least in a series of emails so we don't have the invective injected to defend or inflame the egos of both sides in this debate.

Please lock the thread and converse when cooler minds govern a more private conversation where both sides to this are represented.

And bring a statbook. We have almost as many number crunchers around here as we do trolls.

And I agree with TMNS on what he was trying to say. Forums suck for having a debate.

I don't know much about current play obviously, but I read logs and the fora and this thread in particular and I think the real problem is how the rewards come, not the rewards themselves. For the most part I think this whining about powerful shifter forms is ridiculous, many of you johnny-come-lately's weren't around but for those of us that had the pleasure of fighting the wolverine, the displacer beast, the yeti (which was comparatively weak) the bulette, and some of the other early shifter quest forms, these new guys seem nice but in no way over powered.

No, my point would be to give them (and other more powerful rewards) for actual roleplay, and not for role contests. As I read these battlefield threads and pbfs it strikes me that people who happen to be better and more creative fiction writers end up getting rewarded, but people who perhaps had those oft-spoken of "long lived chars" and "well rp'd chars" and so forth do not.

I think the idea and implementation of the role command all those years ago were good. But I think it has evolved poorly. It has attained an unwarranted level of importance and focus, to the point where it appears to me to be eclipsing the actual roleplay and behavior of the characters. Perhaps I am mistaken and it is my mistake arising out of knowing only from what can be seen here, dios, and the few emails/pm's I receive from players. But that is indeed how it appears, and I think it should be addressed, and changed. The focus should be on the actual roleplay, the day to day/week to week/and for long lived chars month to month behavior. As it is, that focus is now on the roles that are read only by one or two immortals, never ever read by a mortal (while the char is active) and has absolutely zero bearing on whether the char in fact roleplays that role, or just happens to be terrific fantasy writer.

Having identified this problem (as it appears to me, again), I offer the solution to tone down role contest rewards - do not make them too minor, they should be encouraged, but the guiding principle should be a middle level reward - and leave the truly powerful rewards for players that in fact roleplayed their roles, whatever they may be.

nt

nt

nt

nt

n/t

There have been periods during which, overall, we've been very bad as a staff about giving out rewards to cool characters. At those times, especially, I've been a big proponent of higher-end role contest rewards, since, I would rather there be some avenue to get unusual or cool stuff as a player than none at all, and at times that's been the choice before me as an administrator.

(Obviously, I understand that some people would be happier with no one having any rewards at all in such a case. I just don't agree.)

It's just, logistically, much easier to convince an immortal who may not have a huge amount of time to dedicate to the game at that particular moment to commit to judging one role contest for the year than it is to get them to commit (and follow through) with the huge investment of time and effort it takes to do rewards for in-play things well.

But, that being said, currently, I think we're doing much better in terms of rewarding players for in-play things.

I don't disagree with the idea that RC rewards could be scaled down if there are realistically other avenues for cool characters to get fun stuff. Zulg and I have a sort of oft-neglected long-term project underway to better gauge how powerful rewards are and somewhat revamp the process of awarding them, and when/if that's complete it would probably be easy to sell me on setting more of a mid-tier bar cap in terms of power of RC prizes.

>Zulg and I have a sort of oft-neglected long-term project underway to better gauge how powerful rewards are and somewhat revamp the process of awarding them, and when/if that's complete it would probably be easy to sell me on setting more of a mid-tier bar cap in terms of power of RC prizes.<

Why the #### didn't you say that in your other responses to me? ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH.

Instead I was led to believe you were pissed off at me (by your tone) for even bringing up the subject. FFS.

I didn't think of it!

Plus, I felt like you were talking about kneecapping rewards in general and I'm only talking about maybe scaling them down in one specific area.

BEEP BOOP?! D:

...but mostly focusing on making sure powerful rewards go to dudes who are like 400 hrs old and have been beating ass.

The idea behind automating how this "hypothetical" character would get rewards was an idea to keep claims of favoritism down.

But yeah. Role Contest rewards and how powerful they were for really young characters were my biggest beef (as someone who has won there fair share of them).

Boart better be a cool ass ####er to make me have to think of someone other than Dulmisa or Llorenthos when executioner's grace is discussed.

There's an interesting story there is really all I can say.

Because you will be getting 5$ of my cold, hard, dead, job-creating dollars when that person in question dies!

Damn it all :(

If the PBF doesn't fill it in to your satisfaction I can add what I know at that point (although I'm in no way involved at all).

n/t

nt

nt

Kinda wish you could give more details. But I understand that it is likely far off (or a horrible pain to code) or both.
Thats the curious side of me though. :) I would totally learn C to help you code it. XD

nt

So I obviously don't hate the game or the immortals.

And only one of them was my character!

There will always be players who are envious of other players.
There will always be players who focus more on others than worrying about themselves.
There will always be players who speculate on when and why rewards are given when they don't have access to all of the information.
There will always be players who feel entitled to know all of the information behind every immortal decision.

And lastly,

There will always be players who act in similar manners throughout all of their characters that appeal to certain imms.

Certain character traits appeal to me. If a player consistently exhibits those traits in every one of their characters, I have no control over that. I just like what I see. Maybe you can attach forum handles to characters, but I sure as hell can't. When I see something I like in a character, I will reward accordingly.

I can't speak for the rest of the staff, but it would be a complete waste of my time to try and please every player. I'm not asking for sycophancy (is that a word?), but the constant bitching by certain members of the playerbase really makes me question my time investment.

..but because I like you, I'll respond to this.

Here's the situation. In an organization, you seek to create and sustain a competitive advantage. You would normally do this by creating a total quality environment in which standards are riguorously enforced. You would also try to constantly tweak the system that enforces this advantage/adherance to standards to deal with changing dynamics in your employee base (IMMs) and customers (players).

What I am trying to propose is to create a system whereby you cut down on a number of "defects" and "complaints". By automating the role contest and how rewards are given, you completely take any perception of bias away from the customers, which allow the employee base to focus on what they need to be doing from an organizational stand-point. Of course there would still be some players who feel slighted, but these would be easily explainable and completely understandable reasons (I couldn't get empowered for 50 hrs and two weeks - Well, your IMM was on vacation).

That system would do wonders to wipe out the sense of entitlement that the playerbase has currently. If you made it so each player knew the requirements, knew they had just as good of a chance as the next guy to meet those requirements, well then, I'd imagine you'd have a lot of knowledgable happy customers/players.

To claim that you (as Immortals) don't need to worry about this problem because "there will always be complaints" is amazingly short-sighted. It's almost as if you guys have given up trying to create the best possible product for the marketplace. If that is true, then no offense, let me (and several others) be an IMM and ####ing quit. Because if you aren't doing your job as an administrator, go back to being a player and let someone else who wants to do it do it. I don't understand why a lot of very intelligent Immortals don't grasp this. If you worked at Microsoft and you went to one of your employees and were like "Hey, joe employee, I noticed you haven't responded to some of my customer complaints" and he said "Yeah, well, you can't please everyone all the time" I'd ####ing fire him (well, actually, I'd talk to him first and explain why that IS important...if he did it again though he'd be ####-canned).

I just cannot believe that none of you immortals see that the attitude of "I can't possibly please every player" is a problem. I never said that you could, mind you, but that should ALWAYS be your goal. You should always seek to please as many people as you can possibly can, because they are your customers. Without customers, your organization would not exist. I'm proposing a dialogue and a system that would make it EASIER to please players and yet some of you don't grasp that. It's frustrating to me as an emerging business person to see that type of attitude.

>..but because I like you, I'll respond to this.
>
>Here's the situation. In an organization, you seek to create
>and sustain a competitive advantage. You would normally do
>this by creating a total quality environment in which
>standards are riguorously enforced. You would also try to
>constantly tweak the system that enforces this
>advantage/adherance to standards to deal with changing
>dynamics in your employee base (IMMs) and customers
>(players).

-Great, enforce rigorous standards in creative writing and dynamic, novel situations (roleplay in game). Seems like a smart plan.

>
>What I am trying to propose is to create a system whereby you
>cut down on a number of "defects" and "complaints". By
>automating the role contest and how rewards are given, you
>completely take any perception of bias away from the
>customers, which allow the employee base to focus on what they
>need to be doing from an organizational stand-point. Of course
>there would still be some players who feel slighted, but these
>would be easily explainable and completely understandable
>reasons (I couldn't get empowered for 50 hrs and two weeks -
>Well, your IMM was on vacation).

-Automation is retarded for creative writing contests, sorry. All that needs to be done regarding role contests is make it be established 150-200+ hour characters only.

>
>That system would do wonders to wipe out the sense of
>entitlement that the playerbase has currently. If you made it
>so each player knew the requirements, knew they had just as
>good of a chance as the next guy to meet those requirements,
>well then, I'd imagine you'd have a lot of knowledgable happy
>customers/players.

-Sorry, not everyone is going to have equal chance of winning a role contest. Some people are not good at creative writing, or able to come up with interesting character ideas. I think we should change the way football is played so that everyone knows the requirements and has a good a chance as the next guy to be drafted into the NFL. Does that make sense to you?

>To claim that you (as Immortals) don't need to worry about
>this problem because "there will always be complaints" is
>amazingly short-sighted. It's almost as if you guys have
>given up trying to create the best possible product for the
>marketplace. If that is true, then no offense, let me (and
>several others) be an IMM and ####ing quit. Because if you
>aren't doing your job as an administrator, go back to being a
>player and let someone else who wants to do it do it. I don't
>understand why a lot of very intelligent Immortals don't grasp
>this. If you worked at Microsoft and you went to one of your
>employees and were like "Hey, joe employee, I noticed you
>haven't responded to some of my customer complaints" and he
>said "Yeah, well, you can't please everyone all the time" I'd
>####ing fire him (well, actually, I'd talk to him first and
>explain why that IS important...if he did it again though he'd
>be ####-canned).

-Sorry, the imms (employee in your analogy) don't answer to the players (the boss in your analogy). Kinda kills that, doesn't it? This entire passage is incoherent due to your misconceptions about the player-immortal relationship, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of how entitled you are to anything from volunteers.

>
>I just cannot believe that none of you immortals see that the
>attitude of "I can't possibly please every player" is a
>problem. I never said that you could, mind you, but that
>should ALWAYS be your goal. You should always seek to please
>as many people as you can possibly can, because they are your
>customers. Without customers, your organization would not
>exist. I'm proposing a dialogue and a system that would make
>it EASIER to please players and yet some of you don't grasp
>that. It's frustrating to me as an emerging business person
>to see that type of attitude.

-The goal should NEVER be to please everyone. If you want mass appeal, go play a carnival style mmorpg, they'll be glad to hear your complaints.

>-Great, enforce rigorous standards in creative writing and dynamic, novel situations (roleplay in game). Seems like a smart plan.<

Huh? IMMs would still judge role contests by reading the roles and determining who they thought was best. It's only the rewards that would be automated. Duh?

>-Automation is retarded for creative writing contests, sorry. All that needs to be done regarding role contests is make it be established 150-200+ hour characters only.<

Creative writing contests are retarded period (unless you're in 8th grade English). But that's neither here nor there. I still don't see where you made the leap from rewards = automated to the entire contest = automated.

>-Sorry, not everyone is going to have equal chance of winning a role contest. Some people are not good at creative writing, or able to come up with interesting character ideas. I think we should change the way football is played so that everyone knows the requirements and has a good a chance as the next guy to be drafted into the NFL. Does that make sense to you?<

Again, you don't have to enter a role contest. Unsure of why you're basing your entire counter-point on this, since I'm not arguing that point singularly. I am trying to propose a system whereby people who DON'T like creative writing don't feel like they are getting pissed on because the people that do are getting hooked the #### up. And football is that way mostly, bub. All the players have pro days and the combine, and if they don't get those, they can always go to training camp. It's why dude's like Victor Cruz (undrafted) are superstars now. Don't bring sports into this because I will crush you like a grape ;)

>Sorry, the imms (employee in your analogy) don't answer to the players (the boss in your analogy). Kinda kills that, doesn't it? This entire passage is incoherent due to your misconceptions about the player-immortal relationship, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of how entitled you are to anything from volunteers.<

You totally mis-read that argument (but it's fine...I'll explain it again). The problem is the attitude of "We can't please all the people all the time" and just leaving it at that. Again, if I was an employee and noticed a hundred customer complaints (rants on Dio's, etc) I would go to my employee (Daevryn or Rayihn for the purpose of this argument) and ask how they are resolving the issue. If they told me "You can't please all the people all the time" I'd fire them. However, if they were like "Well, I talked to some of them and explained that the customer who received what you didn't also sent in a voucher and responded to several survey's...I tried explaining this to the customers but some of them just wouldn't listen" I would totally accept that answer and move on. A great example of this was Baer's post on what she looks for in a follower. Not her fault that someone finally rolled a shifter follower. However, it is the Admin's fault for allowing that situation to escalate (as it currently is).
PS You're taking the "I would" to literally mean me. But it's not supposed to mean that (I understand though that I didn't elaborate that well enough). The I (if CF were a for-profit) would be Jullias.

>The goal should NEVER be to please everyone. If you want mass appeal, go play a carnival style mmorpg, they'll be glad to hear your complaints.<

The goal is to please as many people as you possibly can. If you don't understand that then you're not a business person and don't know #### about business. Simple as that. And like it or not, there are a lot of unhappy customers at the moment (at least, vocally).

>The goal is to please as many people as you possibly can. If
>you don't understand that then you're not a business person
>and don't know #### about business. Simple as that. And like
>it or not, there are a lot of unhappy customers at the moment
>(at least, vocally).


I can't be bothered, because you argue much like a male rights activist, but this is pretty much a sticking point. Theres niche appeal (guess what, this is what CF is), and there's carnival style. I don't approve of moving away from niche appeal (make some people happy specifically because you don't appeal broadly) to carnival (make as many people happy as you can).

CF isn't trying to make money off customer subscrips, which is where you seem to be missing the point.

>..but because I like you, I'll respond to this.

Thanks.

>Here's the situation. In an organization, you seek to create
>and sustain a competitive advantage. You would normally do
>this by creating a total quality environment in which
>standards are riguorously enforced. You would also try to
>constantly tweak the system that enforces this
>advantage/adherance to standards to deal with changing
>dynamics in your employee base (IMMs) and customers
>(players).


This is already more thought than I care to put into my immortal logins.

>What I am trying to propose is to create a system whereby you
>cut down on a number of "defects" and "complaints". By
>automating the role contest and how rewards are given, you
>completely take any perception of bias away from the
>customers, which allow the employee base to focus on what they
>need to be doing from an organizational stand-point. Of course
>there would still be some players who feel slighted, but these
>would be easily explainable and completely understandable
>reasons (I couldn't get empowered for 50 hrs and two weeks -
>Well, your IMM was on vacation).

See my above post: there will always be players who feel slighted. I don't think anything the imms do will minimize the number of "defects" and "complaints," as you put them. Some players just like being negative.

>That system would do wonders to wipe out the sense of
>entitlement that the playerbase has currently. If you made it
>so each player knew the requirements, knew they had just as
>good of a chance as the next guy to meet those requirements,
>well then, I'd imagine you'd have a lot of knowledgable happy
>customers/players.

If you are shooting for a system that's completely mechanized, then sure. As for me, I'll hit 0 to talk to the operator rather than pushing buttons in an automated system.

>To claim that you (as Immortals) don't need to worry about
>this problem because "there will always be complaints" is
>amazingly short-sighted. It's almost as if you guys have
>given up trying to create the best possible product for the
>marketplace. If that is true, then no offense, let me (and
>several others) be an IMM and ####ing quit. Because if you
>aren't doing your job as an administrator, go back to being a
>player and let someone else who wants to do it do it. I don't
>understand why a lot of very intelligent Immortals don't grasp
>this. If you worked at Microsoft and you went to one of your
>employees and were like "Hey, joe employee, I noticed you
>haven't responded to some of my customer complaints" and he
>said "Yeah, well, you can't please everyone all the time" I'd
>####ing fire him (well, actually, I'd talk to him first and
>explain why that IS important...if he did it again though he'd
>be ####-canned).

You are welcome to be an imm. Despite what you may think (see my above post re: information), all immortal applications are considered based on current and past characters, interviews and writing samples. All immortal applications are then voted on by the immstaff.

I have a job where I have to deal with both administrators and customer complaints. There's paperwork up the ass. I _do_ have to try and please everyone. It's an awful feeling to sacrifice your personal ethics and standards to make everyone happy. Why would I want my hobby to be like my job?

>I just cannot believe that none of you immortals see that the
>attitude of "I can't possibly please every player" is a
>problem. I never said that you could, mind you, but that
>should ALWAYS be your goal. You should always seek to please
>as many people as you can possibly can, because they are your
>customers. Without customers, your organization would not
>exist. I'm proposing a dialogue and a system that would make
>it EASIER to please players and yet some of you don't grasp
>that. It's frustrating to me as an emerging business person
>to see that type of attitude.

I have no idea what you want. What do you want me as an immortal to do for you? Empower you? Tattoo you? Give you quest skills?

I'm asking for a solid, yet not lengthy role. I'm asking for consistent roleplay. I'm asking for a commitment to a character because it's fun to play _that character_ regardless of what ####ty situation might come up.

You say that this organization won't exist without customers. It won't exist without administrators, either. The personal attacks and baseless accusations thrown around by a very vocal part of the "customers" make it a lot less fun to show up for "work."

Walking Dead is on. I'm off.

>I'm asking for a solid, yet not lengthy role. I'm asking for consistent roleplay. I'm asking for a commitment to a character because it's fun to play _that character_ regardless of what ####ty situation might come up.<

I want this too! I mean, this is what I am trying to do with this post, but people are missing the point :(

I don't want this
>I have no idea what you want. What do you want me as an immortal to do for you? Empower you? Tattoo you? Give you quest skills?<

No! I want Immortals (if I follow you) to interact. Whether it be through mobs, the immortal character, or forcing you to interact with other characters. I TOTALLY don't want quest skills given. I feel like the system I propose would take away a lot of negative aspects of player/immortal interaction and would bring the system back to making it more fun for everyone.

>If you are shooting for a system that's completely mechanized, then sure. As for me, I'll hit 0 to talk to the operator rather than pushing buttons in an automated system.<

Only the system for how rewards are decided on would be automated. The Immortals would still be choosing who would get these rewards (by imm comments/login times/hrs played/strength of role/time in cabal/pk stats/et cetera - the criteria that I proposed was meant to be a starting point not set in stone) only because the rewards would be automated and lesser in power, negative people wouldn't have a leg to stand on when they bitched about it. I mean, I'm sure at least one person might bitch that my 300 hr Storm Warrior got the ardor quest spell and the swath of destruction edge, but yeah...

>I have a job where I have to deal with both administrators and customer complaints. There's paperwork up the ass. I _do_ have to try and please everyone. It's an awful feeling to sacrifice your personal ethics and standards to make everyone happy. Why would I want my hobby to be like my job?<

Well then, how about turning this more into a hobby again? If you automated the reward system, then you wouldn't have to deal with posts like this, you wouldn't have to deal with large amounts of bitching/complaints, and you wouldn't have to sacrifice your personal standards. ####, you could even add contingencies so for a situation where someone did something completely off-RP you could note it and then when the criteria of hours played hit, you could have a response auto-sent to the player in the form of 'A great and powerful voice rumbling from the sky says "If only you hadn't full-looted that Squire and claimed someone else did it" as you feel yourself almost learn the intricate words of the ironskin spell.

My goal with this whole post was to make things easier on Immortals and make it so that the playerbase wouldn't be able to have this sense of entitlement that leads to poisonous attitudes. My goal is to erase the perception that there are favorites who are unfairly rewarded. I understand that no one but me has the time to read every post in this thread, but I hope that you at least understand that.

I'm not convinced that an automatic system will do the job of a rewarding immortal better.

IMMs would still decide via snoop, immortal comments, et cetera who should get the rewards.

The key part of this idea is that NONE of the rewards would be something that would completely change gameplay. Such as the "game-changing" rewards.

Again, my idea is really only the starting point. I never propose that the system I proposed would be THE system.

>There will always be players who act in similar manners
>throughout all of their characters that appeal to certain
>imms.

You nailed the leading cause of Imm favouritism pretty nicely. Same people get rewarded over and over again due to this reason. It is not something that is going to change, but what you can do is to select how big rewards you are giving out to them. If the rewards are powerful, then you have higher incentive to play the same character or follow the same Imm again in hopes of powerful rewards. With powerful rewards, it will be more difficult for other people to complete with these rewarded people than what it would be otherwise. It is primarily a matter of where do you want to draw the line with the power you give out as rewards.

I'm not one who ever gets big rewards, I don't tend to be ignored
either. The idea of what sort of limit should be on rewards (if any)
I'll leave alone. I mean to talk about favorites. I have a favorite
ice cream. Should I now go out an eat vanilla because I am biased for
blue bell dutch chocolate.. Hrm now I'm hungry. Where was I?

You like what you like. They like what they like. I know certain
personalities I just can't do (I try now and again and fail)
So if I know a deity I intend to follow likes a personality that
I know I can play why would I NOT choose to do that? Why should
they decide to not like the behavior? I CANNOT do a bold take
charge leader guy. I cannot do the cold arrogant bastard. So you
will rarely see me make the attempt to follow a god who digs that
sort of thing. I'm more along the "OMG that dude just got steamrolled
6 times and is picking a fight again with the same gang. WTF?!?!
You go dumbass! Here's your lastname." kinda guy. Okay that is a
little exaggerated... maybe not too much though. So anyway, the
people who like that sort of guy tend to like me. If I'm not
following a deity they tend to pick me out for something because of
how I act. I'm not looking for it most times. (I did try that once)

Maybe I can break it down for people in an easy way. You don't get
anything but grief? Well no one likes a douche.. don't be a douche.
People will like you more, imms and players alike. Maybe even IRL.

You are operating under the false assumption that I know who is behind what character. Not only do I not have that ability, but I've absolutely no interest in connecting characters to players.

He never said you did it purposefully. Just to clairify. :)

The process of recognition isn't required. Your favourites just know what strings to pull for their rewards. That's what makes them favourites, playing in a way you like them to play and getting rewarded in the process. The result will be these same guys getting rewarded over and over again. You don't have to conciously play favourites for the effect to happen. Unless your preferences happen to strongly favour originality of the concept (which can happen only so long until concepts are used up), it may happen that you're rewarding variation of the same role over and over again, possibly played by same guy.

Thank you; I'm sorry if I misconstrued what you were trying to say.

When I think of favoritism, I think of consciously rewarding the same players over and over because of who they are. I think we disagree on our definition.

My religion is pretty straightforward, so it's rather easy to "pull my strings," IMHO. In no particular order:

Be competent at PK; you don't have to be a monster.
Roleplay your character; act like I am always standing over your shoulder.
Don't be a douche to your cabalmates.
Don't be a douche to your enemies; Yes, you can be evil without being a ####head.
Don't act like you are entitled to something more than you are getting; maybe you are, but an IC god is not going to see it that way, in any case.

There are some more, but that's a good start for an Akresius follower. If I consistently see the behavior outlined above, rewards may be forthcoming whether it's your 20th Akresius follower or your first.

I just don't play as much because of it. It's been like this for about 12 years. It's nothing new. The imms have ALWAYS had favorites, and they have their hated ones. Like me, I've had countless worthy characters over the years and the ONLY rewards I've EVER gotten was vitality quest rewards, a cabal edge and 2k imm xp (as Grecken and it was VERY much appreciated), and I won a role contest in which I was given a boatload of thief points. All of my tattoos came from pre-2001 and the system isn't comparable to today. Trewyn got his specs taken away as his reward for good rp. It took them two weeks to prepare a quest for me to get my specs back and in that time I con-died. I had to earn my leader weapon. It wasn't given to me. It subsequently got stolen and then broken. It took Thror about a week and a half to get me another one, and it was my off-spec that I didn't use much, so I didn't get to use the weapon all that much. All of you kids today are just ####ing spoiled.

My problem is actually the opposite end. There are a few of us, and I'm one of them, that the Imms aren't very fond of. (Don't believe me? Do a search for all the questions I've asked on here and look at how many of them have gone unanswered.) So it's rare for us to get ANYTHING. And for us to get something, we have to put forth one spectacular show, and what we get pales in comparison to what others get. So it's real disenfranchising to see them drop a ton of goodies on the newbs who they say never break RP but I see them do it all the time. If we put in the SAME effort, we'd get the big zip as a reward. And when Cyradia basically proved my suspicions with her leaving, I've lost a lot of interest in this game. I've put a lot of effort into making it what it is today. The imms don't make the game, they make the rules. The players are the game. So after all these years of getting squat, it makes it so the reward for putting forth the effort doesn't carry as much weight as the reward for being lazy and not caring. So I suggest you all take my approach and just stop caring. If you don't like it, play another game. Honestly, seeing the game still alive after all these years is all the reward I need. I get to say I was there in the beginning. NONE of my other gamer friends get to say they play the game they built 20 years ago. I'll get to say that in two years. I just wish it was more fun to play, and player attitudes are the biggest contributors to the shortening of the fun stick, not the Immortal Gifts Arms Race.

The other contributor is the length of time it takes to prepare for the unbalance at hero. 20 minutes of prep gathering for a 4 minute fight they are just going to walk away from. That's not fun, and it is compounded by the Immortal Arms Race. The fix for this would be to make shield and aura potions more plentiful, as well as doubling or even tripling the amount of talismans and scrolls available. That way people would swap licks more often. Then the rewards become flavor text and not game-unbalancing. When this game was at its most fun was when ABS items were non-limted and you could stuff them in your bag and people didn't bitch so much about getting ganked down.

Normally people don't like people for a reason but I digress what is overpowered really isn't. If it can be beat by more than 75% of the classes with an average skill vs average skill it isn't overpowered. It SEEMS overpowered when someone skilled goes against someone not so skilled. Anything does....I REALLY hope the imms lock this Threat because it hasn't really been anything useful it is just another whiny bitch fest because you think your character was worthy of something that someone else got. Nut up or shut up.

Why the hell do you want to lock this thread man?

This is the attitude that pisses me the #### off. I try to start a thread to have a discussion with the IMMs and players, and certain players just put their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, and go "LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU". If you adopt the attitude that the IMMs are perfect and can do no wrong, it's not a healthy attitude for them or you. I'm one of RayBaer's biggest defenders (both in real life and on the forums) but to say she doesn't #### up with her judgement from time to time is patently false.

Of course there are going to be players that feel like they deserve more than they got. Just like there are players like me who feel they deserve LESS than they got. That's human nature.

We get it. You love the CF where 60 hr characters have heroed, gotten into a cabal, and gotten rewards. Honestly, if you were to look at objectively, it should be ME and the other, older vets that feel this way (since we have lives/work/families and don't have time to play 4 hrs a day) but on the most part we don't. That should tell you something.

I don't know man, you want to have a private discussion about this, PM me on Dio's. Just disappointed you seem to be driving the "Stop whining dude everything is fine" attitude in this thread.

I don't get any love! Back in my day we walked uphill in the snow both ways! Balance = no one has any perks, and everyone has full abs all the time!

Cry more newb.

> (Don't believe me? Do a search for all the questions I've asked on here and look at how many of them have gone unanswered.)

I think I answer most of the questions, and I couldn't name a single one of your characters, FWIW.

You answered some of his questions and left some unanswered. It's maybe 50% with +-20% error margin or something like that.

unless you're Isildur

The only people engendering a culture are the pussies like you and half the dios population that won't stop their bitching. I haven't even been able to play in two years or so, but I'm going to be pissed if no one gets cool rewards anymore when I do get time to play again.

If people want cool rewards, then they should play decent, long lived characters. Just go ahead and play the game, Sam, to the best of your abilities. No one is going to give a tin #### that you were so superbadass that you got a third legacy at level negative-fourteen. Also, have you ever gotten a third legacy at a lowish level? You never talk about stuff like that, so I was curious.

PS - Is it true that Oswhatever distended his pk range in his teens, twenties, thirties, and forties as a good aligned shapeshifter? What, that's not impressive enough to give a sweet reward to?

What a bunch of crybabies.

nt

...flipping out at the perceived "whining" I am doing.

I never claimed that long-lived characters shouldn't get rewards. In fact, I claimed the opposite, that long-lived characters SHOULD be the ones getting rewards. However, in the current implementation of CF that's really not how it works anymore. Most of the current characters with beefy rewards got them before hour 200.

I'm confused by your second paragraph. For the record, I got a legacy at level 20 with Uthral and at level 17 with Mohdrim, so I can speak for the fact that young (in terms of hours) and low level characters are getting HUGE rewards.

As to your PS, well, Jindicho killed a ####-load of people at those ranks, as did Miric, Silja, et cetera. None of them got rewards like Oshui did. PK-prowress is over-rated when you are able to get RNG luck with cabal/class/race choices. From what I can see Oshui got a really nice forms to PK with (good for him!) and used that as well as Fortress gear-helping to dominate lesser members of his range. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while but just never had the time to. To break it down bit by bit...

Teens - You can get wands that hit for DEVASTATES at these levels. With the right preps/gear, you can kill pretty much any lowbie character at these ranks if you just make sure you are paying attention.

Twenties - Depending on your form, you can clean up. Of course, you better be pimping out limited aura/shield.

Thirties - This is where it's starting to get easier to smoke people due to the fact you have serious levels on your foes. Some of the 2nd tier forms really lend themselves well to PK, especially as an air/offense guy. Still, if he DID distend at 10/20/30 this is impressive.

Fourties - Not hard to distend if you get your form early and have found your sleeks. I've done it before.

>PS - Is it true that Oswhatever distended his pk range in his
>teens, twenties, thirties, and forties as a good aligned
>shapeshifter? What, that's not impressive enough to give a
>sweet reward to?

No it isn't. Rewards should be for good RP, not PK achievements. Rewarding a good PKer for PK achievements is likely to result to a character that is perceived overpowered by the rest of the playerbase. Distending throughout your range can be done by a great RPer that deserves a reward at some point, but it can also be done by a griefing douche. Therefore it isn't impressive enough to give a sweet reward.

What gets me is that people get all these rewards for the sole fact that they write stories well. That is just really stupid to me. Reward away for good RP. Cool, but just because they can write stories? Dumb.

"The only people engendering a culture are the pussies like you and half the dios population that won't stop their bitching. I haven't even been able to play in two years or so, but I'm going to be pissed if no one gets cool rewards anymore when I do get time to play again."

Nice to see the player-base here is still roughly eleven years old.

The way Imm rewards worked on my old mud:

There was a month long global quest able to be participated in by all levels. At the end of the month the winner got a unique custom stringed helm with decent hp and hit/dam. Even better, it gave the user detect everything. And permanent blindness.

But it didn't matter that the reward sucked because it gave bored heroes something to do for a month.

If there were no rewards or unique options people would get bored.
I love seeing cabal leaders get beefed up powers. ie) Battle Commander, should be one tough mofo. Scion Chancellor should shift into some abomination. The Nightreaver being logged on, should make every enemy in the realm fear being caught in the wilderness.

It should give people something to strive for. Good roleplay, good interactions, ballsy players...throw them a bone.

That being said, it should be fair to everyone to get neat perks. And as long as Imms are holding true to that, the system works.

Not sure if the Imms would embrace this but I was thinking that the game should add a Immortal Feedback command for characters. When chars are created you select, Newbie, Average, or Skilled. Newbie's who enter this command trigger something that would ping Imms to help them out with some feedback. Might be a good task assignment for HeroImms to help out with. Feedback could be: Not consistent with roleplay, useless in raids. Whatever that char is being deemed at lacking. Might help the people that don't get rewards or get noticed....get better. Or realistically cause more work for the Imms and create more bitching....ha

Role contest rewards should be cosmetic flair to the charactor to help them enact their role into gameplay. It shouldn't be a game changing power boost. You should notice something 'special' from these chars. That being said, the role contest should be two part. One: Writing a good role. Two: Roleplaying that role and impacting other players. That's the kind of person that deserves a a neat perk. The good writers who just powergame and wait for a perk, hell...give them some XP and they can grab a few edges for their effort in making an interesting read.


Having not played this game for 3 years (though reading boards regularily), I feel bad for the Imms. You guys whine when they don't reward, whine when they over reward. I'm surprised they are still volunteering to do this.

...hoping you'd give your opinion.

Thanks.

I'd like to think this isn't a "whine" post. Perhaps I didn't phrase the subject/content of the first post correctly, but that's on me. This is merely an attempt to start a discussion with players and IMMs stating their opinion.

I agree cabal leaders should get a bone thrown their way (as someone who has led cabals, it does get really really ####ing tough to deal with some of the #### that comes with it). However, how are we regulating what type of bone someone gets and when they get it?

Is it fine for someone to get a quest form if they are leader of SCION? For a 400 hr character, the answer IMHO is probably. However, what if the character is someone like Tavlin who was named Advisor before he hit 100 hrs? Or ####, even someone like Ghrimriddor getting Commander before he hit level 26? How do you decide when to give characters like that rewards (edited to add: and sometimes those dudes have it even rougher because all the pimp powers you get as a leader aren't even available to you at those levels)? Because they are mostly a different animal than that dude who was a hero for 100 hrs and then was leader for another 200 hrs.

I really like the feedback idea. Any ideas on how to keep veterans from choosing "Newbie"? Players are always going to seek to game the system so I would imagine the goal of an administrator/implementor would be to create a system that discourages "gaming". I think Scar/whoever did a great job with Mummy quests and the anti-"powergame" drawbacks it has. My goal would be to create more situations like that.

Sure, there's favoritism. Same way the people who put forth the most effort in a company and make the higher ups recognize them, etc. get the biggest bonus.

If you would rather have balance by making every character forced to be a gnome hand spec, great, it'd be balanced but boring as ####.

I like having a reason to write a good, creative role and play it for 400 hours.

I like that people are incentivized to try to make the game better for everyone else.

It sucks that you are letting sour grapes color your perception of such.

PS: Saying you want abs and "other imbalanced things" gone invalidates your argument for me.

See, I can totally ignore the salient points and just focus on something I want to.

Seeing as how I've played a total of 30 hrs on CF since June, I don't really see how you can say I have "sour grapes". I just know I've had MULTIPLE people talk to me about how they are concerned that there are characters that are over-rewarded.

Again, I love how people are arguing against my point by claiming "I want to have a reward if I write a good role and play it for 400 hrs" which PROVES my point. Playing your role and playing it well SHOULD BE IT'S OWN REWARD. I can't stress that enough.

I have no idea where you got the gnome hand spec part of your post from. I never wanted that. Let me elaborate on my "Abs and other imbalanced things" comment, point by point.

ABS) I really don't like the fact that you can be totally two different characters depending on where your sleeks pop. Have an easy set? You're instantly competitive at all times. Have a really difficult set? You better know some unique wands and be able to tailor your fight style to deal with the fact you aren't decked to ####. I've often said my solution would be something that would be a bitch to implement but would fix this problem entirely (hence, why I've never been mad at the IMMs for not implementing it). If you want me to rehash it I can, let me know.

Role Contests) As someone who has won 4 (repeat, 4) of them, I think the rewards given for a victory are much too powerful, especially because none of my winners had more than 100 hrs at the time of the win. I really don't find it fair/balanced that I get a very powerful boost on my character just because I can write a good story. I've had over 20 people ask me to write roles for them because, and I quote, "I want to win a role contest and get something cool".

Imbalanced things) There are several things in the game that are imbalanced right now, mainly because the things that used to check against that imbalance either aren't feasible anymore (giant gangs) or logistics keep it from happening (you no longer have 20 people in your range at all times...so ranking is absurdly easy...hence, high XP penalty characters are no longer at such a disadvantage). I've outlined several times how I would fix this and no one but the players have ever commented on it. Despoil is a perfect example. Despoil is OP but only when there are a ton of competant SCIONs on. Normally, that's not a problem, but now we have a lich, two quest form shifters, at least one other character that has a beefy reward, etc. Not only that, you have Krunk slaughtering villagers left and right, and a strong village is one of the things that keeps SCIONs in check.

I get the feeling that now that you've used your AIM list and Hell trips to get you at a competitive point with the best players in CF, you could give two ####s about helping anyone else at this game, and that's sad.

I felt my RP wasn't rewarded. (edit: Any more so than Mharl's rp was rewarded.) Does that not fit in line with your current whine?

I could never be an imm, because I'm a selfish person. I RP for fun, and for the enjoyment of others, but I'd get bored if there wasn't a tangible benefit for me, unless the standard of RP went WAY up, which I would enjoy but would never consider asking for.

The gnome hand spec comes from Sirlin where he talked about balance vs homogenization (you can have street fighter be ryu vs ryu and its balanced!). Essentially you want no high end perks so its "balanced" but also not as fun for the people who do actually put in the time.

I'd like to see role contests only be for 200+ hour characters. Granted my role contest rewards have been mediocre (shield spell on an AP, nightwalker familiar was by far the best but not particularly powerful, a paladin spell on a paladin , and I think one other I can't recall), I still feel it should be so. This discourages writing stories for throwaways.

I feel some ABS locations should be removed (the very easy and very hard ones), but it is a difficult question to answer.

Despoil isnt remotely OP.

Yeah, hell knowledge = pk ability. Clearly.

I mean, you were Chancellor when there was clearly a more deathful conjurer in your own cabal. He also won a RC so it's not like you can state your RP was noticably better than his.

You also got plenty of attention from the IMMs in terms of interaction.

Also, what DID you want? Did you really expect that you'd get some crazy beefy quest skill/spell just because you RP'd well for 200+ hrs? Did you not realize that adding something like that on top of Scion leader powers + quest familiar might just make things not fun for your enemies?

The hell knowledge comment came largely because I played against you when you were a newbie and you've gotten so much better now. However, your attitude has also changed. Old Artificial would have joined with me on this thread.

New Artificial claims this quote

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=4&topic_id=93115&mesg_id=93135&page=

never happened. See where I wonder why there is a disconnect for you?

I have no idea why you'd think I'd join with you in this, nor do I see why you seem to think I say that never happened...have you read my sig on dios...?

And I realized I had your opinion as a n00b about CF totally confused with someone else.

You haven't changed. I guess that's bad? You still don't seem to care about anyone if it doesn't benefit you.

nt

>I gotta believe Zulg, at least, knows this is getting bad.

Heh you do know who created every quest form and the current implementation of ABS, right?

In any case, I really feel like we (as a staff) can't win. We've gone through periods with less rewards and special perks and people didn't bitch any less about that than they bitch about there being too much now. If it's impossible to make the players as a whole happy in this specific respect (and I genuinely believe that it is), I might as well give a Narissorin a quest form because I think he's cool and not give a #### if that makes anyone but me happy.

You've put your time into this game. More unfun hours than us players so do it. Just please keep it fair (in game)




>>I gotta believe Zulg, at least, knows this is getting bad.
>
>Heh you do know who created every quest form and the current
>implementation of ABS, right?
>
>In any case, I really feel like we (as a staff) can't win.
>We've gone through periods with less rewards and special perks
>and people didn't bitch any less about that than they bitch
>about there being too much now. If it's impossible to make
>the players as a whole happy in this specific respect (and I
>genuinely believe that it is), I might as well give a
>Narissorin a quest form because I think he's cool and not give
>a #### if that makes anyone but me happy.

> Just please keep it fair (in game)

Honestly, I think it pretty much is across the board.

I mean, maybe I (or whoever) likes and tends to reward a certain kind of character or a certain kind of play -- we all have our biases there and there's no getting around it. But that's a different thing than ooc favoritism, I would say.

Because there is a large enough sample size to show that there is a very high correlation of certain players getting love.

For instance, I love the player of Yarglen. I have since we used to get into all sorts of problems when we were both semi-new. But he got an inordinate amount of early love with all his characters. Now, IMHO, he deserved all that love, but there is a large sample size to prove he gets love more often and earlier than others.

There are other players like this as well and it's really none of my business to claim you're talking out your ass, but again, you're not being completely true (either because you think I don't deserve it...which I understand; or because you honestly don't know, which would trouble me).

Just glad that we are having this discussion because I think it's important for the playerbase and the Immortals to at least hash out the issues.

Eh. I've only had HM's in role contests, and most of my rewards are either cosmetic (Yarglen's long desc) or religion related. Which makes sense, since I actively seek out imms with nearly all my characters. I love my rewards though because they're fun. Titles/long descs...it's the little things that I really really like.

I've never had a third legacy, triple virtues, quest forms/skills or anything. And I don't think I deserve those since I don't play characters over 200-300 hours very often.

...was that I got sick of telling the people I talk to OOC that you are ####ing awesome and deserve everything you get.

I cannot tell you how many times I got complaints about you being "over-rewarded" from Russians, Pittsburgh'ers, pretty much everyone. Anyone who interacted with you or had a brain would realize "Holy #### this dude makes the game more fun for EVERYONE" and wouldn't have a problem with you getting 3000 IMM xp before level 35. I used to love when Russians would be like "Dude's 30-40 in PK and I'm 90-4, why is he getting rewarded" and I'd be like "Maybe you shouldn't be a giant #### and gang everyone and maybe take some chances like he does?".

Does that make any sense?

Well, thanks. That's awesome, I'm glad people think I make the game more fun for everyone. I guess I just don't often feel like I'm over-rewarded since my rewards rarely(if ever) have an effect on gameplay at all.

But anyway, I see the point you're making.

...was to clarify the differences between perception/reality.

Perception is that people are ower-rewarded. Is that true? I don't know because I can't see everything and I don't have access to things that the IMMs do.

But I do know that IS the perception at the moment. And not just one I have. One many players have.

Go back to what I said: we all have our biases.

The Yarglen characters I can remember tend to be the kinds of characters who are pretty much always IC and have memorable RP, take big risks in PK, and are competent enough that at least some of the time those risks pay off. That hits a lot of immortals' sweet spots.

That's not to say other people don't do some or all of those things, and doing any of those things isn't a guarantee of reward. But I haven't the slightest idea of what his IP is or anything like that, and I would be genuinely surprised if anyone else did, either.

About the IP part.

I was saying, I can tell nearly all of Yarglen's characters because of his playstyle. I'm POSITIVE you and other IMMs see the same things I do.

And I'm not saying having favorites is BAD. However, denying that people have favorites re: Imms/players is just patently false and counter-productive. Certain players have tells (Amberion: Awesome RP/PK, tends to get upset when he is looted; Isildur: Super classy, never takes cheap kills, isn't the baddest/best but is close; Jerrokrar: Competant as hell in PK, but think's he's even better than he is and can't be objective about his faults; Igsoeh: Amazing RP, decent PK, loves to mix it up his character's CON be damned; Hopelessdwarf: Super competant in PK/RP, tends to be more comical with his RP/PK, tends to not be able to beat the "best"; Sogs: One of the best PK/RP, always with a really intelligent twist; Balrahd: Classy yet skilled, intelligent yet ballsy, tends to be the guy that people think of as a "rock"...I could go on, but I'm pretty damn good at spotting players before I know who played them).

Make sense?

I wasn't trying to suggest it isn't already fair in game. I really have no way of knowing this. Others might but I don't. I'm just saying it as a general request.

...because of course I know Zulg coded those. I'm not an idiot.

However, did he make them knowing characters would get them at 100 hrs? Did he create ABS knowing people would power rank to 42 (whatever level DA works for black rods) and just delete if they got a bad rod?

Did you guys know that certain immortals would tell players what final forms they would get (allowing players to constantly re-roll until they got the best final forms)? Did you know that while some immortals would be uncomfortable giving powerful rewards, others would have no problem giving someone Dopple?

And here's how you can "win" this discussion. Simply have the discussion. I'd love to know the decision process when someone wins a role contest/gets a quest spell/skill/form, but I understand that you will most likely claim "need to know basis" (which I do totally understand). I just think that while you guys are good people, part of the processes you guys use are fundementally flawed.

>However, did he make them knowing characters would get them at
>100 hrs?

I'm not aware of that ever happening though maybe it has at some point.

>Did he create ABS knowing people would power rank to
>42 (whatever level DA works for black rods) and just delete if
>they got a bad rod?

Maybe not, but I'm not sure what a better solution is.

>Did you guys know that certain immortals would tell players
>what final forms they would get (allowing players to
>constantly re-roll until they got the best final forms)?

I'm aware of this happening in years past; any accounts of this happening more recently that I'm aware of are, as far as I can tell, false. At some point, maybe five years ago, the immortal logging around this became much more robust.

>Did
>you know that while some immortals would be uncomfortable
>giving powerful rewards, others would have no problem giving
>someone Dopple?

Sure. I correct for this as much as I think is reasonable.

>And here's how you can "win" this discussion. Simply have the
>discussion. I'd love to know the decision process when
>someone wins a role contest/gets a quest spell/skill/form, but
>I understand that you will most likely claim "need to know
>basis" (which I do totally understand). I just think that
>while you guys are good people, part of the processes you guys
>use are fundementally flawed.

There's really no question we can't always do a little better in this respect, and it's not as though we're totally disregarding player input in this respect, either. A year or so ago, a lot of people were saying that not a lot of characters got rewards on the par of RC rewards for other things; I think we've made a conscious effort to give more high-quality rewards to characters who are cool and who we think make the game better in other ways -- but then, here we are with you (and some others) saying that that's too much.

...are the player attitudes behind them.

Let me expand on that: I think that this has a created a culture where people feel like if they DON'T get rewards, they can't compete. That's been proven time and time again by some of the responses from people saying things like "Why would I play 300 hrs if I didn't get a reward dude? U so crazy Sam". Let me make this perfectly clear...THIS IS BECAUSE OF THE PLAYERS, NOT THE IMMORTALS.

It started around 2007 or so where people really start bitching that immortals didn't give enough rewards (personally, I loved that era of CF just as it is but that's just me). So, because players kept bitching and bitching and bitching, the immortals probably decided "Hey, we can do these role contests semi-regularly and now people won't complain because there will be plenty of characters getting rewards". That then led to players getting upset that they wrote a "badass" role and only got 1000 IMM xp, or that they won the role contest and only got 2 trains and full empowerment where someone else got the barrier spell. It's human nature to covet what others have, so I understand that while this isn't something you can ever fix (can't please all the people all the time) it's still something that should be discussed and tweaked at all times (IMHO).

I respect the hell out of the fact you're having this discussion. No matter how people respond I'm not trying to say "This character sucked" or "Immortals are a bunch of cheating ####s". What I am trying to do is take a topic that has been hugely debated OOC via Dio's, IM, gchat, etc and bring it to the Official forum so we can have a frank discussion.

PS Re: imms telling about forms. You know, I think Yoshimi is a dude who has a problem with lying. So I can accept your answer that this isn't happening anymore. However, the fact that it DID happen in the past and I've heard other players tell me the same thing about OTHER immortals, makes me think there is some truth to it. As we stated to Jerrokrar on Dio's, "If 1 person is telling you something, it could be bias. If 3 are telling you, it could be sour grapes. If 25 are telling you this, there's something to it".

My only goal is to make CF a better place for everyone (especially n00bs, who are already at a disadvantage).

>
>>However, did he make them knowing characters would get them
>at
>>100 hrs?
>
>I'm not aware of that ever happening though maybe it has at
>some point.

Granted it was RC win, but I got unicorn at 120 hours. I can't speak
for any of the others.

-Big rewards will make role contests a chore, since people will write more than they find fun to do in order to get them. They will also be more likely to be unhappy with their rewards due to the unfun effort put in.

-Role contest rewards should be capped to an edge at maximum. Custom titles and last names are also good rewards, as is immxp.

-Shrine RP and being a good follower has tattoo as a designated reward. I find things like a religion-specific quest form a bad idea as the reward for being a good follower.

-There is a concern of favouritism in CF. Imms watch their own followers and cabals more other people, not to mention how time zones happen to match. Thus these characters much greater chance of getting noticed and rewarded than their non-follower peers.

-Quest forms and other such rewards should focus on being nifty perks that gives the shifter an option he didn't have (such as giving sand lizard to a shifter with no regen forms), rather than the form pwning everyone and their mother and making other forms obsolete due to the badass form being the better option in every situation. Same goes with things like greater angel conjuration. There should be a reason to conjure a normal one in some situations rather than giving the conjurer an OP version of an angel, you should give something that is suitable for some perk job rather than a power boost.

-Powerful quest forms and such perks should be reserved for older, established characters who RP well. You could give out lesser perks for younger ones.

All these forms aren't that much stronger they are just different.

Different, not stronger. There has been massive complaining about the black jaguar's power in Dio's (and whether it was given too early) and I recall some Imm mentioning that quest forms are a bit more powerful than regular ones. Perhaps they should generally be as powerful as (or less powerful than) rather than a bit more, with the focus of giving something the shifter doesn't have, and the bit more saved for rare special cases of stellar RP and longevity.

They gave abilities to cover basic preps such as stone skin, fly, or even healing abilities like cure poison/plague as rewards.

I think a couple people even complained about it not being powerful enough lol.

Nt

FIREBLOOD (3242)
Some adventurers can learn abilities that most of the mortal realm only dreams of.
The ability to raise one's own body temperature to the point of cleansing yourself
of maledictions is a nearly lost art, and is known by some as having the blood of
fire.

nt

nt

I think quest forms, legacies, quest skills etc should be given to those who last a long time that have good RP.
(Not nessicarily deathful, if thats not the point of the character).
But Consistent good RP should be rewarded in the long run.
I dont have any problems with characters that get into the 250-300 hour range getting perks like these.
As long as it is for Good RP. I dont like the idea of these being Role contest rewards.
You have other things you can give out at that point. I'm not saying don't reward players.
I'm just saying role contest is not where these big rewards should be.

That being said, I love it when imms give out small things like Cabal edges, last names,
imm exp, con quests (noobs need more con yo), custom long desc (these are so cool).
These make me feel like I'm doing good with the character. Eventhough they are small, they make me happy.
When I got a cabal edge with Elleryne, I was so happy.

I like the idea of quest forms being a unique cool form, especially if the idea is to give a shifter something they didnt have before, like a water form, or a regen form, or a flying form.
But, I still think they should be in line with a highest tier form. They are awesome already without the power boost. Even just making them cooler in a utility sort of way is awesome enough.
Zulg is awesome for coding them btw. They really are a cool idea.


I love it when Imms run cabal events.

Like in fortress where a big undead dragon strikes. Or in battle where you have the rites. These things are fun to me.
I think they are fun for all involved. :) Even if you die horribly. :P
It is a good chance to reward the cabal with small things for doing well in the fight.

I got a third legacy for winning a Thror rumble contest a long time ago. That and a few cabal edges and titles are all I've ever gotten. So long as the rewards are given based on character merit and not ooc connections I don't have a problem with them in the game. I like the challenge trying to pk the people with them and it also makes me want to step my game up a bit more in the hopes of getting something neat.

I really wish the rewards would get curtailed. I've never received rewards greater than some ImmXP, a last name, and once I was Dread Lord for all of maybe two weeks. I've written what I thought were rather flushed out roles, and received 1k-1.5kxp for them, but have never won a role contest. Beyond my limited ability to care or put a lot of time into CF, I can admit that I'm REALLY not interesting to watch. I don't run around trying to PK everything that moves, and I don't go out of my way to interact with everyone on the mud- in particular Imms. I really just play to have some interesting fun, explore, read, et cetera.

My favourite Immortal is still Scarabaeus, as I think he's the only Imm that cares to watch my characters- and I loved the rewards he gave me: Randomly Restoring me in minorly dangerous situations, essentially just saving me time in doing something rather mundane.

And this comes from a player who over the last couple of years has only played A-Ps and Necromancers with any seriousness.

This coming from a person that hasn't gotten anything more than a tattoo. I understand how hard it is to keep a long lived character and I believe they should be rewarded for what they do. Role contests are fun and quest forms just add a little difference to the class. The funny thing is anyone could beat these people but are too afraid to. Porcupine, Pachyderm, Gorilla, well any offensive form should either fight close to these forms.

I play two types of characters- old ass ones that go to age death and throw away trash chars that I don't take past 30 95% of the time. Every single one of my old ass chars that I play seriously goes well over 200 hours and was rewarded to a degree, except my very first char that I made to learn how to play CF. (Yay for Zannon!)
Thendrell, 3 virtues / tattooed. (And that was because Ysal took pity on a newbie learning the game and took it on herself to actively help me get better at really playing a character.)
Kalisda- Two RC honorable mentions- got a cabal edge and 2 con
Lasentia- Got +2 chr for RC, courage spell for Thror tournament
Allysia- +1 charisma for being old as hell
Salyeris- Battlecry skill, +2 con for RC, tattoo and quest instrument

However, looking at my char pbfs, in almost all cases those rewards came at a fairly late point in life by CF standards- a point where most players have already deleted since most chars never top 200 hours. And outside of Thendrell getting 3 virtues and a tattoo (and I was uncaballed and did no pk'ing really), it would be hard to say any of these were over rewarded or extremely powerful because of imm rewards. And with all those rewards, I was happy to get them because they were bonuses. Any bonus is nice to get, but they are never required to make a char tough. Allysia was actually my strongest char PK wise, and she was the least rewarded of them all. Rewards don't make the char strong, the player does. My bards do well because I learned the class, not because of the rewards they got.

So that said, I have no problem with people getting rewards and some people being tougher than others. However, I also have to think any reward should truly be earned. The turnover in CF is so easy that there is not all that much incentive to sticking it out with a char. You notice this a lot when you play a single char for a very long time- that you have maybe a group of 8-10 chars that are consistent and that is around like you are, but otherwise, it's mostly new faces every 5 to 6 weeks. People throw in the towel early and often, for whatever reason. And that's their choice to make, but how many RC winners have we seen where the guy deletes within a week of winning? How many chars ever make it past 200 hours even? (I'd say less than 10%) We notice the strong ones because they are the ones sticking it out. They are the old characters. They have gained notoriety that makes them stand out. I couldn't tell you a thing about Oshui for example, I'd never heard of the guy until people started bitching about black jaguar. I think he talked smack to my Commander once, that was about it. But now, everyone knows who he is mainly because of a reward he got. Then they blame Baer for it and for favoring people, which is not really fair to her. I think Baer is a cheerleader for CF as a whole, not just for her followers. She puts a lot of effort into CF that goes unnoticed and unappreciated I'm sure. But the second she gives one guy a perk, people complain. I don't even think his was an RC, which makes it even harder to bitch about. RCs are the only thing I take issue with, and even then, it's hit or miss.

A RC should be a reward for people having truly played out their role instead of just having written it. Put a 200 hour minimum on a char before they can enter a RC, hell make it 300. It should be a reward for people having an actual impact on the game by their presence, not people that don't have any impact until they get the reward. Also, the reward should not be the rich getting richer- make the rewards more subtle. Battlecry on Salyeris was a nice perk, but it was functionally useless in terms of making my char stronger. It netted me maybe 2 kills in the 400 hours I had it. But it was a nice RP perk that gave me a slight edge. The con itself was the best reward, because that enabled me to just keep playing and having fun in the game.

Putting requirements on an RC entry ensures the guy is playing the role to play the role, not writing the role to try and gain an RC win. The scion def/def shifter may be awesome, but people are going to see the char as nothing but an OP over rewarded scion shifter because they gave an offensive quest form to a def/def scion. There are valid concerns when you can win an RC in 50 or even 100 hours. There are concerns when you give a def/def shifter in scion a highly offensive form to compliment his already high power level. (And I just hate shifters and will never see thje appeal of playing another one anyway, but that is my personal bias coming through) And people will key in on those chars far more than the ones who never get anything, and point and cry foul and say "why not me?".

As players, we have to stop thinking of CF as a place where our char is the most important, where we should be rambo and kill everyone and blame everyone else when it does not work out. I roll chars, rank to 11, and charge people and die. Get up, do it a few more times, then delete. I had fun for a few hours, and Cf enabled me to do that. Cause hey, why the hell not? If people stopped thinking PK was the end all be all, or that PK statistics in any way shape or form even mattered, we'd all be better off.

You know what I got for hitting 250 pks with a character? The same thing Phyliis Weaver got for choosing the box in wheel of fish instead of taking the Red Snapper. Absolutelty nothing. (Really, this whole post was really just a way for me to put a UHF reference in) The CF imms didn't send me a check for $500.00 and a plaque saying congratulation for winning CF signed by the entire Immn staff. They didn't say you get to choose a special race/class combo for your next char. Basically, all that I got for playing a char for 990 hours was the fun of playing the character. And if it's not fun to play a char because you feel like you need rewards to compete against a handful of other people that have them, well, that's just unfortunate. There is fun to be had in CF even when you're not PKing people.

And if people really want those super juiced characters dead it's pretty easy actually. Any two people can easily make a combo of two chars that can effectively slaughter any one. But I think at the heart of it what people complain about is not that there are tough chars around, it's just that at the moment they are not playing one of them.

Luckily there's a solution for that. Play a wood-elf bard! It's so easy, even a newb can do it, I'm proof of that. :)

Firstly, damn you for discussing something that draws my attention.
I've been trying to stay away from the forums beyond the BattleField
lately.

As an IMM who really only hands out occasional cabal edges, titles,
tattoos, etc., I consider myself a "non-rewarder" IMM. I operate this
way for a number of reasons:

1) I think all little rewards are awesome, and so should you, including
my interaction. ;)

2) I tend to be myopic in that when I have time for the game, I'm more
or less focused on people affiliated to me somehow, i.e., Acolytes,
Battle, my followers, my spheres, dwarves (haha, kidding). Because of
the skewed nature of this, I don't feel hugely comfortable handing out
rewards beyond the norm due to the pitfalls of "favoritism". I don't
want people choosing to follow one of my religions for powergamer
rewards either.

3) I see a lot of rewards out there and think, damn, I'm glad I'm a
non-rewarder IMM.. but at the same time it also makes me feel a
little hamstrung when I see posts like this. If I really do want to
reward someone, it may come under fire a little bit as being one
more reward in the arms race you're talking about. Instead, I just
tell my people to kill rewarded people. :p

4) Role contests - I'm on the fence. *old granny voice* Back in my day
when we first ran role contests, they were twice a year and all I got was
a title and two trains! But in all seriousness, I've benefited from role
contests too - I got a quest form for winning at a time when IMMs weren't
rewarding as heavily and I don't think I would've gotten one otherwise.
That said, I'm going to change the way I personally run and reward them
because I don't believe we need 3 winners and 5 honorable mentions
every month of the year.

This doesn't really address your imbalance concern, but I thought it
might help to have one IMM's opinion.

What comes to role contests, title and two trains isn't a bad reward. These days we have edges, so you are able to hand out those as rewards.

>1) I think all little rewards are awesome, and so should you, including
my interaction. ;)<

Was just telling someone the other day I'd rather have "good" IMM interaction than a reward any day of the week. Of course, I play CF to further my imagination and enjoy pretending to be someone else, not to rack up stats on how many people I killed or what phat loot I had. Thror made Ghrimriddor's entire life fun, and that's even if I had never got 1 point of IMM xp/Leader/Quest skill. He fleshed out the character and really made him fun to play, just by taking some time out to do cool ####...I think sometimes it's easier for an IMM just to give a reward than to do worthwhile interaction.

>4) Role contests - I'm on the fence. *old granny voice* Back in my day
when we first ran role contests, they were twice a year and all I got was
a title and two trains! But in all seriousness, I've benefited from role
contests too - I got a quest form for winning at a time when IMMs weren't
rewarding as heavily and I don't think I would've gotten one otherwise.
That said, I'm going to change the way I personally run and reward them
because I don't believe we need 3 winners and 5 honorable mentions
every month of the year.<

Hey, you're preeching to the choir. I haven't written a serious role in years (I prefer to write them now on the fly). However, the last 4 I wrote seriously (except for *wince* Jindicho) all won role contests. I don't think it's fair I get an extra legacy or whatever just because I can write well.

I'd touch on some other points but hoping for more discussion. Thanks again.

Every character that has rewards still gets worked over now and again. Also, there seems to be a pretty even distribution of them amongst the cabals and aligns etc.

I agree with Yarglen, everyone can die, even beefed up Role Contest winners/Leaders with quest abilites. I was never debating that. More saying why make an already tough-to-kill character tougher? None of the n00bs he is fighting have cool rewards yet...(because they are n00bs) so how is that fair for them?

We (the entire playerbase) are engendering a culture whereby if I don't get rewarded, I then feel slighted and cheated. We have n00bs asking about quest forms before they ever rolled a shifter. And that's a ####ing problem to me. I can't tell you how many posts I read on Dio's or here about people bitching about rewards. It's absurd.

And for all the people who say it's always like that, well, maybe we should try to fix that?

How many of them have actually played a character that the majority of the playerbase thinks did a great job? The problem isn't so much that quality characters are getting rewarded. The problem is that everyone feels like their random throw away character should be on a level playing field with a character that has been around and taken their ass beatings to get better and learned the ins and outs of their combo.

Next question: Of all the characters who have recieved quest forms/legacies/skills/powers etc as bonus for either role contests or longevity etc., are there any that you think wouldn't still be beating ass if they didn't have the rewards? I imagine almost all of them would still be whippin ass left and right.

...in that, a character that is beating ass anyway shouldn't get something that lets him beat ass EVEN MORE.

And you also touched on the other aspect, which is unfortunately just a part of human nature. If you reward 10% of the playerbase constantly, well then that other 90% is going to get pissed THEY aren't getting rewarded (even if they don't deserve).

I think IMMs have the right idea a lot of the times. Just the wrong implementation. And also, they tend to work within a vaccuum in that they aren't "beholden" or "accountable" to the players in the current CF landscape (though they try to be).

But then where is the incentive to actually make and rp and stick to a char? If there were no rewards for making a high quality character that the playerbase enjoys and wants to interact with, we would have 100 Jerrokar's. Is that a game you want to play? I sure as hell don't.

>But then where is the incentive to actually make and rp and stick to a char? If there were no rewards for making a high quality character that the playerbase enjoys and wants to interact with<

Um...the incentive is simply continuing the character dude. You really feel like if you made a badass character and didn't get rewarded you wouldn't play? That totally STRENGTHENS my argument that the reward system has gotten out of control.

Let me give you an example:

After Ghrimriddor, I wanted to play something that interacted with Sivyh (because Isildur was/is awesome). I also didn't want to play something Empire that would just be cookie-cutter (such as duergar shaman, human thug thief, fire sword, etc). So I rolled up a shifter with the express idea I would "Preach the Word" of Twist and aid whichever cabal needed his "magic" the most. Joining Empire actually made the character LESS powerful, so much that people thought I was an OOC perma with Stunna because "why would a shifter join Empire?".

When Twist tattoed me, I about #### my pants. I didn't want/ask/need the tattoo. I just wanted to roleplay my character the way he was in my head (which was the only reward I needed). I suppose that's the difference in the way I play (coming from an old-school D&D style background where the RP was the reward) and the way many of the current playerbase plays.

PS Thanks for having this discussion. I don't care if everyone agrees with me. I legitamitely just want to hear people's opinions and propose my own.

That being said, getting rewarded def helps to keep a character interesting after you hit a plateau. You have said yourself that being a leader gets flat after 200 hours. It is hard to keep a character truly fresh and enjoyable without some external factors coming into it.

And for what its worth, you have probably been rewarded more then a lot of the playerbase because you don't make a point to seek it, you let it come to you. You have gotten more rewards then me by a long shot.

...and FWIW, I've also been ####ed over more than you have as well (re: Dronstyrr, Jindicho). It's the RNG of life :). And to be honest, other than Ghrim getting Brace I haven't got many rewards in years (I have legitimately stopped trying to write roles to enter in role contests because I think it's crazy I've had a legacy 4 times before level 44 just because I write well).

And about the leader thing, you don't need rewards to inject that "life" into the character, you can often find a cool RP aspect. Like Akedeh starting to raid all cabals that had a mage leader. Or, in my case, uninducting yourself.

Look, I'm not saying you SHOULDN'T get rewards if you're a great, long-lived character. My problem is that the rewards are getting more and more powerful and people are getting them earlier and earlier. In 3 years from now, people will be pissed off if they don't have a reward after playing 25 hrs. That's what I am trying to accomplish with this post.

I'm split on this.

On one hand, I think a lot of the super powerful characters that have rewards are shrouded in this player-created fear and are not by any means unbeatable. This sickens me. At any given point in time any other character can be dropped by another character. I'm 100% confident of this fact.

I'm going to delicately jump around some active characters and if it's not allowed, by all means IMMs, delete/edit my post accordingly.

An example of player-created fear and hype: When I met Krunk as a no-name elf warrior who had a lifespan of maybe 2 weeks, he had all this hype surrounding him and I expected to get bulldozed. Instead I think we went an even 2-2, all solo. I got him twice, he got me twice.

Krunk's a cool, long lived character of a combo that typically isn't super deadly or super long-lived. I think his rewards are fair, just and are not over-powered. Ditto with most of the other rewards I've seen handed out.

However, on the other hand I do think there are way, way, way more questforms/greater conjie spells/extra whathaveyous around now together than ever. We've had 5 hero shifters with quest forms all living more or less at the same time (give or take a couple of weeks). That's unreal.

I'm not going to touch on the debate of whether or not these forms are overpowered, but instead touch on the fact that they're wearing off in mystique. The first time I saw a quest form I shat my pants. I like that feeling. I like them being a rarity, something above the norm.

I want them around, but I want to be shocked and awed by them again. I want to see a questform and do a doubletake.

Mainly in that leaders get them - and I am absolutely cool with leaders getting cool ####. I mean, they're leaders - they SHOULD be a step up from everyone else.


Otherwise, I don't lose much mystique - It's not like more than 1 guy has the same form, that they'll be around 24/7 forever, etc.

I like the idea of CF having cool things like that, and love the idea of a cabal leader's class getting a boost. Shifter with a quest form, warrior with another legacy, etc.

They got extra virtues or extra legacies or new forms.

They just weren't synergistic to their existing powers (such as giving a defense/defense shifter an air form...which is the one thing that makes that character near unkillable). Leaders used to get owner-only custom weapons. Now, because people bitched about that style of implementation (even Nepenthe!) we now have leader weapons instantly when you get made leader. Another example is NbM getting sand lizard with Aksecereh. I know everyone jokes about that but that's the type of reward that should be given. That reward made him more powerful but only slightly. Now you got characters given stuff like Behir, Unicorn and Jack Blaguar that are better than any other form in CF that you could normally get. It drives me crazy when I see a dude win the role contest and get something that perfectly makes his character 1000000 times stronger (like Fjodir with Barrier or that SCION transmuter Whisydan tried to give DOPPLE to). FOR A ROLE CONTEST WIN! I'm not even going to go into the fact that at least 10% of those role contest winners didn't even write the role they are using (they asked someone else to).

Warriors could perhaps get a single skill from another spec? Shifters a a third top tier form or a SUPER good second best tier form? Transmuter... Err, no idea, chain slow? Soften etc? Conjurers? I like the familiar rewards! I really do! :D Much cooler than the greater angel/demon/devil/archon thingy.

Thieves? Well, thief points obviosly? Rangers? Not sure about them, never played them. But still....


Anyways, give someone barrier spell.. That's just borderline over the top. It's not that great. I've NEVER had any problem finding ANY of my barrier wands. I though since I got the spell, I never even looked with Fjodir, which prolly saved me a good 40ish hours ingame, + a bunch of cooldown time gathering barrier wands. No, barrier spell wasn't all that, and at lvl 40 it costed so much mana that I was basically hampered going into battle.

...since you know I love you and all and I think you're one of CF's best players.

It's just that, it wasn't just the Barrier spell being given to you that was a problem. It was that + Champion of Man (for merely answering a question right...it's probably one of the top5 most expensive edges in the game) + having your unholy restrung and returned (x2) = The impression of blatant favoritism.

You've admittedly tried to mudsex RayBaer. To the rest of us layman, therefore, she's probably going to like you more than funnyone. So for you to get all those rewards, even if you DID deserve them, makes the rest of us feel like #### and that if we want to get rewards we need to shove ourselves up an IMM's ass (or something like that) or know them OOC.

And I'd rather get into the argument of the relative strengths of the barrier spell on Dio's (PM's, actually) where we don't have to hash everything out and derail this part of the thread.

Raybaer just happened to online at the time and as a Nexus imm, it seemed to make sense for ole Puhg to use her.

So, um, yeah, I knew that time was your choice but what about the other time?

Mon Nov 14 15:09:21 2011 by 'Enlilth' at level 51 (289 hrs):
Enlilth returned his weapon, made some globals, he's about to start craming unholy down some fort hole.

I mean, I'm all for cool RP driven activities. But here you have a character that was supposedly anti-evil AP, who gets a fantastic edge (say what you want about Champion of Man but Fjodir DID ask for it) for answering a question right, gets the barrier spell for writing a good story, gets his unholy returned TWICE and THEN joins SCION...I mean, if you don't see why some people would be like "WTF?" I don't know what to tell you.

So now you have a character that is basically immune to wrath/priests, has barrier on a stick, has a 100+ charge unholy, and has despoil + nightwalker + etc. I couldn't even dream up a scenario where all those things happened to a character of mine even if EVERYTHING worked out the way I wanted it to.

Then you get into situations where players like Tony make it their only goal to kill that type of character, and only log in when he's on et cetera et cetera. Which leads to people wondering if people are logging on specifically to see if a character is on and if it's not logging out.

This is the thing I think is really damaging CF. Because it's escalating...it's getting much worse.

Do not give out quest forms, specific edges, skills, spells, legacies and anything that
affects gameplay that can't be acquired by others in different ways.

IMM xp is fine, it can be used to get edges but edges are available in a variety
of ways. Anyone can compete with that.

A specific *IMM-given only* edge is _not_ fine as it affects gameplay.
Same goes for the other stuff that are *EXCLUSIVE*.

I remember years ago, Valg in TopMudSites forums praising CF for being 100% free
to play, where one can't simply buy rewards that affect gameplay.

Well, the current state of affairs is not much different to a pay-for-perks MUD,
as the rewards that are being handed down are

(1) exclusive
(2) given to the same clique of players (due to play style, RP skill, religion knowledge, etc)
(3) *GREATLY* affect gameplay
(4) controlled by the IMM and not by the player

Not at all...I have never seen any evidence of it making anyone much stronger. I have seen evidence of them getting their asses handed to them by people without any rewards. I wish the whining would stop.

...that someone getting the barrier spell as a role contest reward didn't make him stronger.

Or Jack Blaguar.

Or Nightmare.

Or Black Dragon Hatchling.

Or Ohbehb having 4 legacies.

Seriously? You really don't see it making people stronger? We play a different game then. PS Anyone can still die. That's not the argument. However, AS I SAID EARLIER, some of the checks against these rewards no longer exist, which make them SEEM more powerful than they used to seem. Because perception does = reality sometimes.

I don't know dude. You seem like an apologist who is trying to defend someone. I don't like making that assumption but the sheer breadth of your "STOP WHINING GUYS EVERYTHING IS FINE" posts makes me believe that's the truth.

... so basically everyone who disagrees with you is, what, on drugs or part of a conspiracy?

And that's why we can't have an adult dialogue about these kinds of things.

Conspiracy? When the #### did I ever claim there is a shadowy cliq of people plotting to argue that I'm a ####ing retard? I don't think I've ever mentioned the word conspiracy, once, in this entire thread. The closest I came was to you completely disregarding the IMM/player shifter question by impeaching Yoshimi's character (which isn't hard to do) when I thought that there was more to what he said.

And about the relevant part to my "Are you on crack?" post was directly tied to getting barrier spell (and other powerful rewards). So let me tell you why the barrier spell is an extremely powerful reward (if it wasn't then why don't you give it out to more players Nepenthe????? as far as I know only 2 people have gotten it in the last 5 years and both were RC wins).

How many times have you said that there is strategy involved with sleeks and gathering them? Now Fjodir never has to worry about that.

How many times have you smoked a mage with a character that needed to kill them by finding out where their rods were and ambushing them? Now Fjodir never has to worry about that.

How many times has a thief you've played stolen rods to make sure that character couldn't use them. Now Fjodir never has to worry about that.

Get the point?

I'm not saying Tesline is on crack about the reason WHY people got those rewards. I'm saying he's on crack if he thinks the rewards you get in those instances don't make a discernable difference.

But keep obfuscating the real point for some reason. You even have another IMM telling you you're wrong about people not getting rewards at 100 hrs. I know you're not omnipotent (remember you telling me cranial worked a certain way when you didn't know what the #### you were talking about?) but seriously dude, the attitude of "You don't know what you're talking about player because I'm an IMM" is so counter-productive to keeping a lasting relationship between the players and IMMs.

I'm really disappointed in you man. I'm beginning to think I shouldn't even bother with a post like this. I mean, it's not like I've defended you and your wife repeatedly in the past. It's not like I made a "Why I play CF" post a few months ago when everyone was throwing up a bitch-storm about other ####.

Maybe that's my problem. Maybe people don't care about this ####, and I'm totally in the minority. After all, it's your game and if I don't like it, as Valg said, "You can play something else".

Basically I was commenting on your apologist bit.

But wow I didn't expect that rant in response.

Edit: And if you were not in fact attempting to insinuate what I thought you were, I owe you an apology.

...I know that :( Everyone always seem to not understand the point of my posts and take it in a completely opposite direction.

Let me state my points as clear as possible pour vous :)

1) The CF culture (to MY eyes) has begun to drift towards "I need a reward to survive". And that sucks, because it is completely untrue.

2) It is important for both IMMs and players to talk about this type of thing, as it is important for the long-term health of the game.

3) I personally feel like Role Contest rewards have gotten out of hand (mostly because I know OOC that many MANY people have asked me to write them roles because they want to win a role contest). As you've said in the past, I like it a lot more when someone RP's their role as opposed to just writing a great story.

3a) Because of this, people have created a sense of entitlement. They feel that "Hey I wrote an awesome role, why don't I get Jack Blaguar or Barrier as a spell" when that's akin to comparing apples to oranges. RP'ing your character, writing a great role and sticking to it...THAT IS YOUR OWN REWARD! If you get a perk because of it, more power to you, but you don't need it.

3b) Furthering this line of thought, you've then created a system whereby players are going to scream favoritism (which is bad for the psychological health of playerbase and IMMs). THIS PLAYER ALWAYS GETS SWEET REWARDS EVEN THOUGH I HAD A MUCH BETTER PK RATIO. THIS IS ####. Et cetera et cetera.

4) I feel like to completely negate many of these negative thoughts, perhaps you should create automated systems that dole out Role Contest rewards? That would completely take any thought of bias completely out of the equation. No longer would we have people claiming the only reason Cabdru got +1 INT was because you knew the person running the role contest. See what I mean?

5) I think we should really be careful on what types of rewards are given to WHICH PLAYERS. As you stated earlier (I think?) you were one of the people that may have mentioned DOPPLE wasn't an acceptable reward for that SCION transmuter. Because, why are we making a dude who already clears his range THAT MUCH TOUGHER? I'd much rather see n00bs with great RP get those types of rewards then vets who completely power-game the system.

Final thought: That was a rant because I've poured over 3000 hrs into CF. I know you've poured WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY MORE, but at the same time, my only goal is to see CF continue to thrive. And I think there is a real caustic attitude regarding this issue from a majority of the vocal playerbase. I get passionate about things sometimes, and I was in no way trying to say you guys are cheating or anything of that magnitude. I was trying to say that the PERCEPTION is that there is significant favoritism, and it's ruining the game. When in actuality, that line of thinking is doing way more damage than any perceived favoritism (because it leads to US VS THEM).

He had 250 hours and 39 player wins a a Scion Transmuter.

I don't agree that he was wiping the playerbase. But I do think dopple would not have been a reward to give him. It'd be more interesting for a Herald to get dopple as a journalist type role to get the "know" to report.

Sat May 19 13:58:00 2012 by 'Whiysdan' at level 39 (142 hrs):
Congrats on winning the May role contest! Enjoy doppleganger!

Sat May 19 14:07:23 2012 at level 39 (142 hrs):
Rayihn has set edge portal adept for Lzenstiet. <PK: 8-2>

Sat May 19 15:21:06 2012 at level 40 (142 hrs):
Lzenstiet advanced to level 40 <PK: 8-2>

Mon May 28 20:48:38 2012 at level 51 (217 hrs):
Lzenstiet advanced to level 51 <PK: 32-4>

So I was completely wrong about one thing (him clearing his range...he didn't do that until later) and right about the other lol (he was going to get DOPPLE at around 140 hrs). Ooops!

And I totally agree with you re: Herald dopple! That would be awesome. Skeeta should have been given it. Damn it all, I miss that character.

You keep bringing the "but they get their asses handed to them" point up
which has nothing to do with what "affects gameplay" means.

Even if we assume that things like extra virtues/legacies, top-tier shifter forms,
additional orc adaptations, extra ranger expertises, barrier as a class spell etc etc
do not greatly affect gameplay (which is bollocks and so obviously wrong),
it's the way that these rewards are perceived by the majority, the non-rewarded
player base, that matters.

They are exclusive rewards, not everybody can have them, and the IMMs get to
be the arbiters. In a sense, you are not only rewarding the few, you are also
penalizing the majority who have to deal with the in-game consequences.

If we are just talking about perception of having an affect instead of actually having one then we are just talking about people being upset about not getting what others did. Yes these are exclusive rewards to people who are long lived and are doing things that are impressive. This is a pk mud with required RP. The other people don't get rewards because


A. they aren't as good of pkers
B. They aren't doing as good as the others in RP.
C. Aren't as long lived.
D. They didn't win a role contest.

There hasn't been a single reward lately that I have seen that has been a huge detrimental effect on Gameplay. I mean this as Pk or RP. You guys are acting like these people just started kicking ass as soon as they were given rewards no they kicked ass to get the rewards then did the unthinkable...continued to kick ass. Who would of guessed?

> I remember years ago, Valg in TopMudSites forums praising CF for being 100% free
to play, where one can't simply buy rewards that affect gameplay.

If, to you, "Cool players that are interesting and make the game more fun for other players tend to get the rewards" is equivalent to "people who are willing to pay more money get the rewards" I'm not sure if we have anything remotely resembling the common ground for a conversation.

TMS - Don't give game-affecting rewards out for stupid reason (IE "favortism, role contests), but only if they rightly deserve it

Daevryn - We don't give a) game affecting rewards or b) for stupid reason

1) TMS - Dude, you really don't know why the imms give the rewards they give out besides what's obvious (rolecontest, which I actually agree with you - then again, when I play, I try to put more into my role, thus, I try to roleplay better, instead of 'just writing a role'). You're speculating on favoritism - regardless of which formers imms said X, Y, and Z, you and they really aren't in the right place to says EXACTLY why the imms give the rewards that they give. FYI - most of my role contest rewards were given because they were creative and were enjoyable for the imms to read, to rp with, and for me to rp. Would I rp/rolecontest as hard without this incentive? Possibly, but unlikely. That being said, I do agree that "gamechanging" rewards for rolecontests are a little iffy - accordingly, I think that the imms should limit the cap on who can be awarded rolecontest rewards to 50+ hours of playing and also include the factor that the player is roleplaying the character well according to the role to get the reward (make it more objective, not as subjective, with the person who is running the rolecontest discussing with other appropriate imms). Remember, the former imms left for a reason, and likely their reason is one sided and is biased.

2) Daevryn - I dunno how badass this black jaguar form is (I looked through the logs, and literally, people are bitching for stupidass reasons. The tactics that the players displayed are worthless - might as well as show a "kill me, I'm a noob"). And game affecting awards are just that - game affecting. It's hard to say that having a permanent barrier on an AP is not game affecting (I disagree with people about the overpowered quest forms, because last time I checked, they weren't really 'overpowered' - people just don't know how to deal with them - like wtf are people doing tormenting a shifter instead of spamming energy drain???). At the same time, if something is game changing instead of just semantics or visual, like a custom title, might want to think twice on WHY you guys are rewarding this character like this. Additionally, I know this may prove to be a bitch, but if you're going to give something so gamechanging, maybe make it more interesting for the players (instead of just, hey, here's free candy) by running a small quest (like the lich quest or the mummy quest) and involving people? I know that Ghrummin's goals/quest for Thror was really freaking fun (kinda wished I had something like that for Knac, and with Mhournhul, I was DEFINITELY going to do something like that).

To sum it up, to both ends, just make it more fun on giving the rewards and a better reason for giving such reward.

FYI - people bitching about black jaguar - you don't know why that was given. You guys are speculating, albeit based on a noticeable trend, but you really don't know what Oshui had to do to get that form. Stop jumping to conclusions.

Rewards make any game more fun. No one can deny that. No one.

That's such a ####ing stupid argument. That's contrary to everything that was argued. I was Zrakkna - that was a HUGE GLOBAL QUEST THAT EVERYONE WAS INVOLVED IN. Out of three people, Ghrimriddor was chosen at a low level - but it could've easily been Zrakkna or Doban. That was a rightfully deserved commandership. Please, if you're going to throw in facts, don't throw in facts that defeats your argument.

Were you arguing about what I said about Ghrimriddor?

The point I was making about Ghrim was that I would have been totally happy with NO REWARDS other than Thror interacting with me. Personally, I had really hoped Zrakkna would be Commander :) and I could just chill in the background working on my RP.

If it was the other point about leaders and rewards, I still think that's a valid concern. How do you reward leaders who are low-hour low-level? You obviously IMHO should not reward them like dudes who have been in the cabal for 200 hrs before they were named leader, but at the same time they often have a giant target on their back which means the player COULD feel like they NEED a reward.

I certainly didn't, but there are enough people that seem to claim otherwise I think it's certainly an issue that needs to be discussed.

Why does that need to be discussed? You're focusing solely on the fact that Ghrim was made commander with low hours and low level. You're ignoring the part of the grand scheme and design of the entire global quest, which is practically the reason why Ghrim was made commander. There were no other dwarves who were chosen for the quest besides you, like there was no other dark-elf who was chosen for the quest besides me and there was no other minotaur who was chosen for the question besides Doban. If, on the other hand, you're talking about that Kharg, that may be a different issue (no idea why she was named emperor at low level besides "there needs to be an emperor", but then again, she was booted as the emperor and renominated later on).

If you're arguing that the quest shouldn't have happened like that, that's different. But you aren't.

And personally, I'm glad that there was such a quest that happened since the character was created until the end. That makes for an infinitely more enjoyable experience.

And I wanted to give a perspective from someone other than IMM character.

Tavlin got Advisor very early. A LOT of people were upset about that (I wasn't, Tavlin was ####ing awesome) and they felt that the IMMs had to know he was Twist and that's why he got rewarded the way he did. Him being named Advisor WAS EXACTLY THE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES THAT GOT GHRIM NAMED COMMANDER. Re: Global quest (Reksah had put something out that the next Advisor would be a necromancer).

I'm sure if it was up to Twist he would have been happy never being named Advisor that early because A) He wouldn't have to deal with people bitching on his death thread/OOC forums and B) He wouldn't have a giant-####ing bullseye on his back (though Twist might like this more than a player like me) for the rest of the players to aim at. I know for a fact people had OOC hatred for Ghrim getting Commander at such a low level and these people were intent on either killing/looting me or proving I sucked and didn't deserve it.

What I was trying to get at re: the low hours comment, was that 99% of the playerbase has no problem giving a reward to a dude who has 400 hrs and is a leader. Yet often, your life as a leader is SIGNIFICANTLY easier in that situation than that dude who was just named leader at 45hrs. So how do you reward those low hour characters? Do you even reward them, or do you wait until they've toughed it out and hit 100 or 200 hrs, heroed, etc? As I said in my experience with Ghrim I didn't need any rewards other than the IMM interaction I got from Thror and playing my role the way it was supposed to be.

That's kinda what I was getting at.

1) Not the same situation. You can easily argue/refute this re: the facts, but Ghrim/Zrakkna/Doban was a massive global quest, while Tavlin was really a Scion only quest.

2) The geist of my stance is pretty much the geist of yours - such position for people who are RARE EXCEPTIONS (note that both yours and Tavlin, arguably, were rare exceptions) should have enough background to justifiably give such rewards. I dunno much about Tavlin - I wasn't playing at that time, but the background of Ghrim, to so many people's viewpoint, was that he was justifiably named commandered. Thus, I think Ghrim doesn't contribute at all to your point. Kharg/Tavlin, perhaps, but then again, we all know how well Twist RPs. Yes, maybe they could've advisored Tavlin later on, but he would've been advisored regardless probably.

3) As stated before, I think early rewards are little iffy. But the question really lies on what "early" means - timewise, or effortwise? I put in a lot of effort with Mhournhul to the point where Daev said that he would try to get me liched. Now I don't know what that means, but I wouldn't be surprised if I got to level 47 at 100 hours and got a boost to getting liched.

4) You're concern seems to the viewpoint of the playerbase. I would typically say (not to you) "Grow a pair of ####ing balls and stop bitching". However, I'm not sure that this is really a factual issue - proximately, perhaps, since you're acting in a preventive capacity. Who really quit the game or deleted their characters because of early rewards to players (as opposed to the lack of rewards, which is a different issue). Maybe the imms have been a little more reward friendly nowadays. But note that people are bitching about Oshui for getting black jaguar, not Whysidan. And when Whysidan became an imm, I saw people getting rewarded left and right with imm xp and cool titles. In fact, I think some people probably got better "gameplay changing stuff". Which leads me to believe that a bunch of people's beef (not yours, but part of where your concern comes in) is RayBaer (sorry to point a finger) instead of the overabundance of gamechanging rewards.

And the attitude that seemed to be prevalent from a decent sample size about said deletion.

As I posted on Dio's, if that's why he deleted (because Oshui got Jack Blaguar) than that's a big problem. And the problem isn't on the IMMs that gave Oshui the quest form. It's on the PLAYERS.

And yes, this is a totally preventative post (thank you for understanding! you're like the only one) in that while this problem isn't that bad now, it could get much worse if these types of discussions aren't had.

The Ghrim stuff was just me trying to add my own two cents about a character of mine. It may not have fit the message (in fact it probably didn't) but I didn't want people dismissing this by saying "Well dude you played Jindicho of course you have sour grapes".

PS God damn Mhournhul owned me again and again. Personally you were my favorite necro of that era other than Dvalygg. Sad you deleted because of work/school :(

Didn't play with Narissorin. If he deleted because of that, he needs to take a few weeks/months from the GAME and do something else. Why the hell would he be so pissed off? That's ####ing stupid. That's like Jerrokrar talking - "Oh, it's so unfair that I wasn't rewarded for being a douchebag, look at everyone else being reward!"

People, just be concerned about your own characters and having fun with your own characters.

The problems is likely the players, as you stated. But you're asking the imms (arguably rightfully) to babysit the players. Note that arguably the reasons why imms give "rude" remarks is because a lot of times, these aren't issues, but just what people perceive as a temporal thing because of ONE or TWO incidences. The sample size of those incidences, in contrast to how often such rewards are being given, is minmal. <5% probably. And that's a double edged sword - since it's so minimal, people will notice it infinitely more.

TMNS - your intents are fine, but realistically, are a moot point because the imms can't act in ways that are preventive. They don't have the time nor the incentive to. Notice that there's a bug board? That's for something that is actual. Notice when Zhulg or Scarab was like "#### this ####, I'm pulling seasonal races" when people were bitching about "preventive" #### on the fact that seasonal races, since they will be deleted shortly, are gonna be a failure?

Would you want them to act in a preventive way? Who sets the standards? If they voluntarily assume control over that (jebus, I'm thinking about duty through torts and crim law :P), then if they don't act in such a way, there will be A LOT MORE BITCHING of "why didn't you do this, why didn't you do that, etc." And that's a territory that they don't want to enter unless they reasonably think there's enough evidence to act like that. It's not a job for them, it's something that they want to have fun in. It's also a bureacracy (arguably) where they truly have to consider issues before implementing changes. And they don't want to do their duty like that.

Additionally, the imms acting in a preventive capacity means they are acting regulators. That's boring work for people who are admins for creative purposes. If people insist that they act like that and they cave in, I guarantee you that there will be a LOT LESS new and fun stuff in the game, which, in turn, would turn more people off from playing the game then the perceivable "overpowerness of gamechanging rewards"

Here, for you, I'll post my solutions, which I've posted a million times, but #### it, what's a million and 1 ;)

Role Contests:

Have these be automated rewards.
1st Place - Edge, Trains, small cosmetic buff (title, long description, a skill/spell like puissance, whatever).
2nd Place - Edge, trains
3rd Place - Edge

Have an automated system set up whereby players who have been in a cabal for 100 hrs would get a small cosmetic reward (last name, edge points, something like that). Have that same system to give another reward at 250 hrs and again at 500.

Have an automated system whereby leaders get a small perk once they hit 100 hrs (if shifter could be an extra greater enliven, if invoker could be +1 affinity pts, if warrior could be edges, et cetera). Have that same system give another perk at 250 hrs and 500 hrs.

Have religious perks be limited to tattoes and IMM xp. Religious characters already have a leg up on Joe random character because they are watched more by immortals. I'm not a huge fan of giving religious chars more things on top of all the other love they get. Plus some people would love to have a religious character but don't play times that their IMMs do. Would encourage less "gaming" of the system by only playing during the IMM hours.

I really think something like this, while a complete bitch to code, would cut out 90% of all the bitching about this subject. Not only that, it would allow IMMs to totally focus on what they want to do since the system would be automated.

Edited to add re: the quest form debate - You could have a pool of potential forms. Then, if the character met the criteria (300+ hrs, leader, 4000 IMM xp, whatever) he would get a form from that pool (instead of an IMM just choosing a form...since that could introduce claims of bias/favoritism). These forms would be placed against other 1st tier level forms (in terms of power), and would have to be watched for balance reasons. As Lightmage said, when he first got Displacer Beast it was crazy buff but then they nerfed it. I remember you thinking that Nightmare was crazy weak, now it seems like they upped the damage slightly which made it a more feasible choice when not just dreamwalking.

You're suggesting making rewards more automated. Are you suggesting that these should be the limits of the rewards? As in a person should not get quest forms? When would someone be "eligible" for a quest form?

Note that, in your proposed system, if someone gets a "special reward", the same issue would happen once again. People will bitch about favoritism, about things being unfair, about gamechanging rewards, etc.

Furthermore, note that this would make things less enjoyable for the imms. If the imms see something cool, they want to give awesome rewards, because ultimately, that makes the game more fun for the player in question.

Re: religious perks, what religious perks are there currently? And how do you define religious perks? As far as I know, it's really tattooes and imm xp right generally, possibly cool titles, besides the recent quest form (possibly, but to my knowledge, that's the first time it happened - Kharnial got his quest form through rolecontest, other people got their quest form through longetivity, cabal presence, etc.)

And what's your definition of "imms totatlly focus on what they want to do?" I think they are totally focusing on what they want to do - interacting with mortals and giving boosts here and there for making the game fun for people (in general).

>You're suggesting making rewards more automated. Are you suggesting that these should be the limits of the rewards? As in a person should not get quest forms? When would someone be "eligible" for a quest form?<

Pretty sure I answered that in the post previously. If you hit the criteria (which could be something like "Has 300 hrs, has a set amount of IMM xp, has a role, has not gone OOC") you would be able to get one of the pool of quest forms available.

>Note that, in your proposed system, if someone gets a "special reward", the same issue would happen once again. People will bitch about favoritism, about things being unfair, about gamechanging rewards, etc.<

Huh? If people bitched about an automated system that took things completely out of the IMMs hands and had the same criteria for each player/character...well then, I don't know what to tell you. Most intelligent people wouldn't bitch with this system (at least I'd hope not). Also, if you notice, none of those rewards I proposed were "game-changing".

>Re: religious perks, what religious perks are there currently? And how do you define religious perks? As far as I know, it's really tattooes and imm xp right generally, possibly cool titles, besides the recent quest form (possibly, but to my knowledge, that's the first time it happened - Kharnial got his quest form through rolecontest, other people got their quest form through longetivity, cabal presence, etc.)<

I know one tattoed character that has high avg drowning weapon that is owner only. I know of another character that got an edge that I didn't even know existed (Vallinane getting that edge that turns divine power damage into something that heals you via mantle instead of just fire). Now, neither of these rewards "break" CF, neither are OP. However, these are characters that already get a ton of IMM love because they are religious. How is that fair for the dude who writes a role/RP's someone who doesn't have an active IMM?

The goal is to cut out any chances people could claim favoritism. Balrahd once said that religious characters get more love because they are watched more by the IMMs. I'm fine with that, but not on the rewards aspect. Want to make your follower feel special? How about interacting with him and having him do quests/tasks etc? I loved that #### with Ghrim, and could have cared less if I got any reward (I understand I may be in the minority in that feeling though...especially with all the bitching going on about that SCION quest).

>And what's your definition of "imms totatlly focus on what they want to do?" I think they are totally focusing on what they want to do - interacting with mortals and giving boosts here and there for making the game fun for people (in general). <

Some IMMs want to code new areas/items. Some IMMs want to focus on new races. Some IMMs want to focus on just being around the mortals and interacting. All of these things are good things. You know what isn't a good thing? Having to deal with a pissed off player who is accusing you of favoritism when he doesn't know what the #### he's talking about. Or having to spend 3 hrs trying to justify why you gave that dude the Mitt Romney quest form (able to deflect ALL SPELLS!!!).

The focus of the IMMs should be to do work THEY enjoy. If an IMM enjoys hooking up his followers, then doesn't that create a potential problem with players realizing this and then ONLY rolling characters to follow that IMM? Or with players hating that IMM and rolling characters specifically to kill those characters? I don't understand why there is such a disconnect in people feeling like they HAVE to have rewards. You ####ing don't. If Enlilth interacts with his followers and gives them XP and a title, he doesn't need to do anything else. The problem is that I'd imagine there are some IMMs that feel pressured into giving rewards because they are worried that the player would complain if he didn't get rewards. THAT IS WHAT I AM TRYING TO FIX.

Man, I really need to focus my attention on school/work. I've spent over 6 hrs writing responses, reading people's posts, etc. I've done what I set out to do. Probably will be my last post on the subject.

You're arguing about automating rewards. Accordingly...

>>You're suggesting making rewards more automated. Are you
>suggesting that these should be the limits of the rewards? As
>in a person should not get quest forms? When would someone be
>"eligible" for a quest form?<
>
>Pretty sure I answered that in the post previously. If you
>hit the criteria (which could be something like "Has 300 hrs,
>has a set amount of IMM xp, has a role, has not gone OOC") you
>would be able to get one of the pool of quest forms
>available.

This isn't automating the rewards. "You would be able to get one of the pool of quest forms available" is not the same as "you will get one of the quest forms available." The likely aspect of this system would be that quest forms would be more rampant in general for people over 300 hours (which I'm actually really fine with - I love quest forms and seeing quest forms). However, as noted above, if people don't get quest forms, they will bitch because player X got a quest form and not them. Unless you want to make the giving of quest form automated also - if you don't, it's up to the discretion of the imms, which means that quest forms won't be automated. Besides, let's be real here - anyone who played over 100 hours, with a set amount of imm xp, has a role, has not gone ooc is eligible for a quest form (not taking into account rolecontest entry).


>>Note that, in your proposed system, if someone gets a
>"special reward", the same issue would happen once again.
>People will bitch about favoritism, about things being unfair,
>about gamechanging rewards, etc.<
>
>Huh? If people bitched about an automated system that took
>things completely out of the IMMs hands and had the same
>criteria for each player/character...well then, I don't know
>what to tell you. Most intelligent people wouldn't bitch with
>this system (at least I'd hope not). Also, if you notice,
>none of those rewards I proposed were "game-changing".

Sorry, I should've clarified as "special rewards" being "gamechanging" rewards. Your ENTIRE argument is not about minor rewards, but that people are getting really really good rewards too early, and thus, people may feel disgruntled at what's happening. And, as mentioned above, "gamechanging rewards" would not be automated, but would be in the discretion of the imms, hence, the same issue as you initially suggested. On the other hand, if you think we should get rid of "gamechanging rewards" in general, that's something different. You're arguing the standards of providing such rewards.

>>Re: religious perks, what religious perks are there
>currently? And how do you define religious perks? As far as I
>know, it's really tattooes and imm xp right generally,
>possibly cool titles, besides the recent quest form (possibly,
>but to my knowledge, that's the first time it happened -
>Kharnial got his quest form through rolecontest, other people
>got their quest form through longetivity, cabal presence,
>etc.)<
>
>I know one tattoed character that has high avg drowning weapon
>that is owner only. I know of another character that got an
>edge that I didn't even know existed (Vallinane getting that
>edge that turns divine power damage into something that heals
>you via mantle instead of just fire). Now, neither of these
>rewards "break" CF, neither are OP. However, these are
>characters that already get a ton of IMM love because they are
>religious. How is that fair for the dude who writes a
>role/RP's someone who doesn't have an active IMM?

You're right, it's not fair. Then again, those people consciously took the effort to do that role/RP - it's an inherent assumption of the risk. I don't know how you can go around that, honestly. I don't think your system will go around that. I guess more imms could snoop more?

>The goal is to cut out any chances people could claim
>favoritism. Balrahd once said that religious characters get
>more love because they are watched more by the IMMs. I'm fine
>with that, but not on the rewards aspect. Want to make your
>follower feel special? How about interacting with him and
>having him do quests/tasks etc? I loved that #### with Ghrim,
>and could have cared less if I got any reward (I understand I
>may be in the minority in that feeling though...especially
>with all the bitching going on about that SCION quest).

I agree, I don't think people should play for rewards. But people do, because that's the nature of this game. You're suggesting that imms get less discretion on giving the rewards accordingly - unless they remove the rewards system entirely, that concept will still be there.

>>And what's your definition of "imms totatlly focus on what
>they want to do?" I think they are totally focusing on what
>they want to do - interacting with mortals and giving boosts
>here and there for making the game fun for people (in
>general). <
>
>Some IMMs want to code new areas/items. Some IMMs want to
>focus on new races. Some IMMs want to focus on just being
>around the mortals and interacting. All of these things are
>good things. You know what isn't a good thing? Having to
>deal with a pissed off player who is accusing you of
>favoritism when he doesn't know what the #### he's talking
>about. Or having to spend 3 hrs trying to justify why you
>gave that dude the Mitt Romney quest form (able to deflect ALL
>SPELLS!!!).
>
>The focus of the IMMs should be to do work THEY enjoy. If an
>IMM enjoys hooking up his followers, then doesn't that create
>a potential problem with players realizing this and then ONLY
>rolling characters to follow that IMM? Or with players hating
>that IMM and rolling characters specifically to kill those
>characters? I don't understand why there is such a disconnect
>in people feeling like they HAVE to have rewards. You ####ing
>don't. If Enlilth interacts with his followers and gives them
>XP and a title, he doesn't need to do anything else. The
>problem is that I'd imagine there are some IMMs that feel
>pressured into giving rewards because they are worried that
>the player would complain if he didn't get rewards. THAT IS
>WHAT I AM TRYING TO FIX.

Once again, good intent. But speculation (unless you have concrete proof that Imms are obligated to be pressured into giving awards). If they are pressured into giving rewards...well, then, I don't know what to say. Don't give rewards? Grow up? It's a game? Have fun with the game? If you don't like them, don't give rewards? To this point, your automated system may work for "small non-gamechanging rewards", but not to the bigger "gamechanging" rewards, which is the crux of your argument.

>Man, I really need to focus my attention on school/work. I've
>spent over 6 hrs writing responses, reading people's posts,
>etc. I've done what I set out to do. Probably will be my
>last post on the subject.

Yea, likewise. I need to finish this memo.

First off, I've never said my system would be set in stone. There would be all sorts of tweaks available in terms of what the criteria is to get a small reward. That would depend on the stats Zulg has available to him in terms of player numbers/average lifespan etc.

I don't think game-changing rewards should ever be given. That's why they are called "game-changing" heh. What would be awesome is if these types of rewards were tweaked so that they were not game-changing. Such as instead of getting barrier as a quest spell, why not just give them protection (for a shifter) or stoneskin (for an invoker) or giant strength/whatever (for an AP). All of those skills are very useful for those classes, and don't "break" the fun-stick for other players.

Why is it even necessary to give "game-changing" rewards in the first place? If every reward was cosmetic and low-end in power, I'm sure at first people would bitch but eventually it would create a system whereby each player had a chance to reach a certain power thresh-hold without having to worry about IMM involvement (let's just pretend ABS and the shifter lottery doesn't exist in this case). Therefore, you'd completely invalidate many of the arguments and vitriol that exist in CF currently. No longer would you have people complaining that RayBaer is killing CF, because her followers would have the same chances to get rewards that followers of Eshval would have.

As to your point about Immortals being reticet to give rewards, read Iunna's post. She basically illustrated what I think her and Thror have stated in the past about rewards and how they give them out.

Hope you get that memo done ;) I've resigned myself to getting no sleep tonight and finishing my case study at 4am ;)

Also, the thing is pretty ####ty compared to wood elf ranger weapons as well.

>Role Contests:
>
>Have these be automated rewards.
>1st Place - Edge, Trains, small cosmetic buff (title, long
>description, a skill/spell like puissance, whatever).
>2nd Place - Edge, trains
>3rd Place - Edge

What about a bot that picks the winners? Doesn't sound plausible, right? You can do this kind of reward limiting by setting a policy and guidelines for Imm staff. The staff member in responsible for the role contest can then manually give out the rewards and the result is going to be better than an automated system. If the Imm can pick the winners, he can hand out the rewards too. Unless the Immstaff actually think that they prefer the automatic tool over manually giving out the rewards, there is no need for such tool.

>Have an automated system set up..

You could have a system that publishes last names of well established, old characters automatically upon hitting the agreed number of hours if the Imms find out giving it out a chore or frequently miss giving out last names to people who would otherwise be deserving.

>I really think something like this, while a complete bitch to
>code, would cut out 90% of all the bitching about this
>subject.

Ultimately, if an Imm has to decide who gets the reward, the automated system is mostly pointless. An Imm is still going to decide things ultimately. Much of what is needed for consistency can be done with staff policies.

My point is about rewards that affect gameplay. It doesn't really matter if players
pay in money or RP time. One could say that it's actually worse the way CF
does it because it is the IMMs that judge who makes the cut and who doesn't.
They also decide what the reward will be.

I don't have an issue with rewards, as long as they don't affect gameplay.
For the ones that do, it should be possible for *everyone* to compete for them
fairly and transparently.

IMM xp as a reward is perfectly fine, the player decides what to spend them on
and there are alternative ways to get them.

Quest forms, legacies, spells/skills/adaptations are not as they're chosen arbitrarily
behind the scenes by immortals based on standards that from the player's POV
are not well-defined and ever-shifting.

What is so hard to grasp about this?

Everyone is playing the game. You don't get rewarded? Tough ####, get better at the game, put in more effort, make better characters, make better roles. Rewards are an incentive for the game. Like the reward for being able to explore Trothon, the reward for killing Tiamat, etc.

People are arguing that it's unfair that someone who put in 1000s of hours of play into the game learning the ins and outs shouldn't have a better chance of being rewarded than someone who put in 100s of hours.

Really? Unfortunately, the game is run by Americans, not people who live in a communist country. We have a thing called a capitalistic society that runs on free market. And that concept applies to everything.

If not for the Imms to judge, how would you provide rewards? Or, as some are suggesting, just get rid of the rewards system altogether (like ABS)? Games with less incentive to excel are worthless games. There's a reason why I used to put in hours to play Starcraft 2 - to get the rewards and strategies, etc.

It's not about rewards per se, it's about rewards that affect gameplay.

They can reward RP, long lived characters, PK prowess, cool descriptions
or role entries with IMM XP or rewards that do not affect gameplay.

IMM XP *does* affect gameplay but it is fine because there are *multiple*
alternatives for the gameplay-affecting rewards that it gives (edges).

How hard can this be to grasp?

On one hand we have rewards that are *exclusive* and entirely controlled
by the IMM in question.

On the other hand we have rewards that anyone can get in a variety of ways
that are controlled by the player in their game-affecting ways.

What do you think is better for the majority of the player base?

If you just RP well enough, consistently enough and long enough (And have some luck) ANYTHING can happen!

I agree that RC-rewards NEEDS to be toned down. A bunch.

All in all, I think that just toning down the RC-rewards would be enough.

I don't have an issue with rewards, as long as they don't affect gameplay. For the ones that do, it should be possible for *everyone* to compete for them fairly and transparently.

***Read what you typed. For the one's that do, it should be possible for *everyone* to compete for them fairly and transparently. Once again, to rehash my point, everyone can compete for them fairly and transparently by playing better/putting in more effort, instead of asking TMNS to write roles for them.

IMM xp as a reward is perfectly fine, the player decides what to spend them on and there are alternative ways to get them. Quest forms, legacies, spells/skills/adaptations are not as they're chosen arbitrarily behind the scenes by immortals based on standards that from the player's POV are not well-defined and ever-shifting. What is so hard to grasp about this?

***So you're saying that quest forms/legacies/spells, etc. are not fine here, which is directly contradictory to your point of "it should be possible for everyone to compete for ". What's your stance? That they're not fine? Or that they're fine? If your stance is that they're not fine, you're saying that such rewards should be toned or given on a more objective standard. Objective from the player's point of view of the immortals point of view? Would you say that people who make the game more fun for the imms and the players should not get such "game changing" rewards? By definition, objective from a point of view can't be had, since everyone is subjective, unless there's a rule or guidelines on what can or what cannot be given re: "gamechanging" rewards. If the imms have that (which they might, who knows), then the players would still bitch because a) they don't have privy to the informatino, thus, don't know how to reach that goal or b) they do have privy to the information, and would strive for those standards only, instead of standards that they set for themselves to enjoy the game.

You don't want exclusive rewards. They are by far the best rewards and should be saved for people who are long lived and are well rped or have a high pk count. Anyone can get these rewards by putting in the effort.

Okay, now that you've restated it I understand what you mean.

I just, to put it in as polite of terms as possible, strongly disagree.