Hey guys...I have a suggestion. It is likely that this suggestion may be 'unpopular' but still, I feel I should toss it out there.

Can we do away with the whole idea of not allowing people to share their IC knowledge ooc? Can we decide to not care if person XYZ hands their biggo prep and a/b/s list to a new player? A lot of games out there (Specifically a lot of competetive pvp muds with larger player bases than CF) make their item locations complete public knowledge. This levels the playing field for new characters drastically, and honestly is something I'd like to see CF consider.

In this day and age a text-based game is well....a text based game. You're going to draw a small subset of the gaming population to start with. If we do manage to draw a new player, that poor sod must compete against those of us who have been playing for YEARS, and have years and years of game knowledge/area knowledge/etc.

Sharing prep/taboo information will allow the newer player to more quickly integrate into PVP.

I don't mind keeping Area explores/quests/etc "top secret hush hush" but why can't I tell someone OOC that detect invis preps can be found in xyz?

I don't think that OOC prep knowledge/etc sharing is going to 'ruin' the game at all. Because the newer players are still going to be 'learning' the mechanics of classes etc. Which is daunting enough, without the entire meta-game of who knows what prep.

I would view this move as a good progressive step toward making newer players feel more invited to the game we all like.

Anyone else feel the same as I do?

But I wouldn't like to see this. CF is unique and the only mud that doesn't suck. Other muds do it is reason not to. Grab 100 players off another mud and throw them into CF and they'd try to use the newbie channel like a OOC chatter box and never RP. They aren't worth dirt. Not to say OOC knowledge makes or breaks RP, but if it's saving us from a garbage avalanche, I say keep the barrier in place. I'm not for opening the flood gates, I'd rather play with fewer quality players.

It's kind of frustrating to see high numbers on those other muds, but CF is worth more than all of them combined.

If it was done few years ago - then the playerbase would regenerate by itself.

But too many old players have left and too little new players have joined the game during the last few years because of the CF being too knowledge dependant.

So it would not increase the CF playerbase right now because it's too late for this.

But many old players would leave CF because their knowledge is the only thing what gives them any kind of advantage over other players.

How much does prep knowledge *really* matter relative to a level playing field?

For prep knowledge to really sink in and become useful, you have to have lost enough fights to understand where and why to use each prep, even damage reduction will cost you as many fights as it wins you against players of higher skill level. They will either avoid taking damage for 10 minutes until you've completely run out or refuse to fight completely, and if their cabal is nearby or your tracking skills are not up to snuff on a non air shifter, you're boned.

I suspect it really takes at least six months and 2 or 3 characters for a player to just start to get a grasp on where preps are and why they are important, and assuming they manage to find them quicker than average they stack everything they can for every single fight and still die when caught by surprise.

I think it takes almost a year and a half to get a firm grasp on when and why the most common preps for CF are important.

By this logic you would need to have players starting as early as 2010 or 2011 for this to even matter in the current state of things, CF has to be fun and competitive even if you know 0 preps, even enlarge and flight, and CF has never been at the point where that was true without giving one deathblow, resist and spellbane to make up for one's stupidity and laziness (at the cost of 5 or so CON of course).

****

People PK at lower levels because the margin of error is higher but paradoxically the HP totals are lower. If you understand how to not die and how to minimize unlucky rounds of RNG on your person against warriors and orcs, and how to deal with bash, trip, and hide, all without relying on AC or 30-ish skills, you pretty much are ensured at least 10 kills before 25 with almost any class given enough attempts and playing during peak hours.

Assuming all of the above are in the ballpark, this tells me that low levels are actually very balanced... but only if you know each and every single spot your potential target could be levelling, solo levelling, questing, gathering preps, or getting observation XP. Right now the MUD is too large and there's not enough methods to find people who don't want to be found pre-hero. It's only balanced if the killer and victim are roughly equal in area knowledge, something that takes literally months of ####ing around and several characters getting ideas to try new things to obtain tricky pieces of gear or kill higher level mobs or find out of the way places to find superior options than what's available in the ####ing bazaar at level 15.

1) Drop the levels for clairaudience/clairvoyance to 25 or 30, rework psychic vampires and lost souls and up the level on devils/archons to 45. Adjust clairvoyance/clairaudience to have similar restrictions to air forms using where, but double the duration to limit use for multikilling. It won't fix it by itself, but it's a start, because in my personal experience even having a flight capable familiar is not sufficient to find other veteran players who simply keep moving. Allowing bards to have locate mark using a 'rumor' skill and allowing assassins to get an area name along with their room name helps players find veterans, not other newbies.

Newbies are stupid easy to find as-is. But the idea is to give more classes more methods of tracking that are more intuitive than the paladin and ranger options, or other people need to be able to hire folks that are available in all flavors of alignment and not freaking level 51 holding their di cks with nothing else to do. That's dumb.

2) Narrow the level ranges on Areas list, even if there are tidbits to find outside those level ranges, they really need to be arranged roughly by appropriateness to get XP in from low levels at the bottom of the list to high levels at the top and that's it, not by exploration. This reduces the need to use an off-site resource to figure out where to go to kill people.

3) Next, we need to encourage more combat at low levels and less powering to hero. I'm not entirely certain how to do this without resulting in funnyone, tesline and Prothero full saccing newbies who don't RP exactly the way they want in order to get bonus automated rewards in addition to their usual behavior, but something besides loot that would encourage lowbie orcs to not only mix it up but learn common tactics at low levels would be a boon. Don't give newbies handicaps, figure out a way to accelerate and encourage killing people that doesn't involve killing a dozen people in fine leather and ragesteel in order to get lucky and finally obtain a piece of +3 dam +3 str gear or a 30 damroll 20 hitroll -15 svs spell kit at level 25 after a straight month of levelsitting and not dying. Finding a way to use the unused CARVE command commonly restricted to bounty hunters would go a long way toward this, tangible level/alignment restricted rewards that can be turned in to cabal outers would go a long way toward creating more action at all levels rather than constant pendulum lopsided hero stupidity that every hero range player needs to be slapped for.

4) We need to discourage seeking that extra competitive edge, particularly at the low levels. We have enough of that in this game already and the preps/silent tower/hell/obs. exp disease is evidence of that. We need to be thinking of ways to encourage/force people to mix it up if they want to survive outside the Inn. We also need to find ways to encourage more group v. group combat at low (pre-35) levels so that the solo killing thieves and assassins are actually threatened once in a while by warrior/muter combos and vice versa and so forth. Find a way to have more fights and learn more things, make preps a last resort not the cutting edge integral strategy to avoid getting permalagged or two rounded by flurry or an elemental vuln.

TL;DR Find ways to make PK equally or more rewarding than levelling. Don't disallow downtime or exploration but make it so that people need to be looking over their shoulders constantly again, not just monitoring detects while mindlessly slaughtering mobs. Find ways to breed at least something of a killer instinct in newer players, not to raise killers, but to introduce a smoother blend of exploration and PK pre-35.

I think as the mobile market increases, there's going to be demand for low bandwidth games continuing.

I don't think there is going to be a resurgance of text based anything on cell phones....do you know how long it would take to type out 'west' ;) or 'Murder Sarien'...you can't be competetive on a mud with a cellphone :P

-S

It should be noted that yes indeed I brought up this topic for discussion. Some people (not myself) acted, and made my idea a reality prior to a full fledged discussion happening. I had an idea, I had hoped to get this officially accepted/in the works, but others took it a different direction. I realize this may be damaging to my persona/etc so...

In the words of Andrew Meyer

"Don't taze me bro"

One of the big rewards to explorers is the rewards they get with it. Putting the time into figuring things out and milking them.

Once you eliminate the puzzle (by sharing the answer) it's a major spoiler to all of that. Wands I can understand being more 'public'. It is a kind of mandatory exploration that I don't think is fair or fun to certain sets of people. Other things I disagree with. Vehemently. Quest information shouldn't be public. They're about solving mysteries and discovering something unique. Often within a story line. Spoilers nix all of that and make their existence pointless. Another box with a slit in the top saying 'insert sword here for 5000 XP'.

At that point we may as well just plunk everyone in an expanded Galadon. With 2 wilderness rooms, and a desert tile, for a free-for-all. Why explore if there's no reward to it?

One idea I've been mulling over is a middle ground. Make everything public but somewhat randomise possibilities on a single character. This would be similar to the way shapeshifters work - in that you can make choices that help guide the direction of your character but have no further influence in the outcome. A system could be devised whereby you make some interesting choices between levels 1-20. These then limit your exploration choices/rewards. Or even your wand choices.

I think making better use of the content we have (and forgotten quests that no one solves) is a better choice than adding more. Especially when CF is so rich in lore already. Although it would be a larger project - it might solve a good few of our problems out right. It would also allow RP to determine 'power' choices. Making friends with Rebels of the Light would put you in good standing with them - gifting you an easy barrier wand and a helm of neuro immunity. But deny you access to a paladin guild set of items that regen mana and prog damage like crazy. You're a mage that wants those items? Then work for a harder barrier wand quest. If you're a paladin the choice might be easier item wise but harder RP wise.

Then you can make the quests transparent. They're level dependent so a character can grow over time to come to any of the paths. Root them into Roleplay. Make people work and justify all of them. Those who justify them poorly haven't played well. Those who don't care for RP can power grab - but lose out on RP rewards as a result. It's a world for the ones who want an exploration challenge. And those who want a level pk field. Hell, I'd make some of the quests outright 'Do a bad deed, get a lifetime of awesome' requests just to make a character react. Playing out weakness in character is cool.

Just another idea.

..if you see someone running around with a built-in quest reward or some super secret shiny, why does your fun appreciate or depreciate based on if they received the information through a site or if they found the information with a character they played 8 years ago?

-thinnie

I have a list with almost fifty sleek locations, a list with a dozen limited wands, and a list of mobs that hold a complete set of sleeks.

And I've spent less time total playing mages than I spent on my last character.

I think sharing preps for sale in non-area explores should be fair game, but amassing a list of sleeks is really just a matter of running around with mages, which is something most characters are gonna do anyway.

What I don't get is, if its not area explore....and its not a sleek..why not make a DB of what/who/where...

and publish it.

Rules on Dios are thus (that I have found, maybe they hid some rules?):

No potion/wand/talisman IDs from non-shop potions.
No limited stuff

Immortals did not respond when I asked for what was allowed.

#### it, just post your DB of what you got and then maybe people will add what they got.

AT the very least you can do all the city shops and then you'll have pretty much every prep you will reasonably need for most scenarios.

I just ICly asked other people about specific preps. Eventually you find someone who will tell you something, even if it is, "hey go here and look around" it is better than having no clue.

Most people are willing to show you around if you are new. Or kill you outright if they are douches (or their RP requires it). I don't see a problem with people sharing this info IC fairly easily. I kinda wish non-limited preps were less gold so you can use them more effectively without breaking the bank. I don't enjoy gathering things to PK but sometimes you have to.

I wish that preps and Alduk were more in line as far as cost. I feel Alduk should be a cheep flat rate for those of us without identify. I don't see a reason in buying a prep for 3 gold that I can easily go find for free by running around Thera. That doesn't mean that prep isn't awesome. Just expensive for a prep.

Alduk's prices are based on item level, and you don't have to use him unless you're a berserker/raider, since every other class gets Lore (which goes up quickly thanks to observation experience).

I agree with this and would like to add that gear in non-area explore/quest be open knowledge too. When I started this game back in 1995 I had no idea about the meta game here and almost 20 years later my knowledge is large and I know I know so much less than others.

There are people who want to play mages but they don't get to see the real workings of them because they don't know A/B/S locations and get crushed by melee and mages that do. The only time I found my black was once was after someone walked me through almost all the locations. Even if mages knew where all the locations were (which I have heard WAG'D at 30 for each type). One still has to find which one is theirs, and know where that NPC/location is.

Equipment and Preps are such a huge factor to this game. Let your skills with your character or the RNG be more of a factor in playing that being in the know... Fights you work for are better than two shotting a newb who never had a chance.

I rolled a single helpful uncaballed neutral support char, and the only people ironically who weren't extremely helpful were Fort. Many strong chars are ridiculously generous with in-game knowledge. I amassed a nearly complete list of wand locations and got enough observation xp to pick demi-elemental transcendence.

Make friends and RP. Strong players love sharing in-game knowledge with friends and allies.

Taking out the in-game learning factor frankly takes out an important interaction dynamo.