Luckily, I'm a ####ing masochist.

Edited: Some examples (and I honestly don't give a #### if this gives away my character):

1) I've been without a cabal power now for a week. Within one minute of my first prayer about, a lower level immortal talked to me about it. That Immortal was awesome. I haven't heard #### since. That's soul-crushing. Glad to see my character isn't worth 10 seconds of an IMP's time.

2) I spent 2 hrs in an off time gathering up preps. A character kills my character in 5 rounds (where I literally got 1 command in). Loots my prep bag. Great, now 2hrs becomes 4hrs. Part of the reasons I gather preps is so I don't die in 4 rounds. But ####, it still happens (IE me dying to Jycenna with stoneskin/protection/anthem in two throws). So yeah CF repetitive timesink?

3) My cabal is in the ####. Now, that may because of player numbers and apathy more than anything, but it's relatively soul-crushing to never see another cabal member and constantly have to retrieve/fight opposition. It wouldn't be bad if I had preps...but I went over that. It wouldn't be bad if I was actually winning some fights, but 0-11.

4) I choose this build because I figured it wouldn't be as bad as my last duergar Imperial Warrior. I was wrong. THIS EXPERIENCE HAS ACTUALLY BEEN WORSE. At least when I was an imperial, the grind had "meaning", IE I got promoted, more donations, better skills. This character has great skill %'s but it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. I'm betting I have a -500000 luck stat, but that may be just bitterness. I fought Gragre and a naked duergar hit me more times than I hit him and I have his weapon at 90%+ and I'm betting he didn't even practice mine. I have a hit/dam of 36/26 and he can't have more than 15/15 and yet he's hitting me 2-3 times a round and I'm hitting him 0. That just doesn't make sense to me. (and no, this is not sour grapes because I made that character delete later lol)

In all honesty, I've returned, and honestly, CF isn't fun. It just is so much easier to play a console game or something else.

You put time and effort into things and other player's goals are literally to ruin your fun. LITERALLY that is their goal.

I'm playing a character that should not have the amount of enemies I do (especially because I'm, no joke, 0-11 in PK) and yet every login I have I #### you not is an exercise in futility. Work hours to accomplish something and then someone (or losing link and then getting killed and looted like I did last night) just dashing all that work.

It is what it is. I can honestly say though that this is my last character on CF.

Is not carrying much so dodges well. Which is one reason I say gear is secondary to an understanding of mechanics. Hope you come back tho.

Originally when I started playing this game, it was in high school with four other friends. We laughed, talked, vented and schemed how we were going to make great characters. We went to college, a few stopped playing. Cut to 10 years down the road and here I am, as far as I know, the last of my group to still glance at this game.

Frustrations with CF and new games like WoW had led me to being an on and off again player. I come back thinking of all the fun I have had over the years, and each time it feels worse and worse like a grind. I play a lot of Battle characters just to avoid the prep grind because I play this game for the PK aspects. I am now trying to play once again as my new family expands, now having a wife, an 11 year old stepson, a 20 month old daughter and a 10 day old son. I completely understand how as we have all gotten older, our time is more valuable and it really frustrates you to spend hours wasted in game when someone craps in your cereal.

That being said, I miss my OOC friends and playing with them. It was fun to vent and laugh about the game, but when I think about it, I could easily do that with anyone as long as they knew what I was talking about. Like the IMMs have said, rant to someone if you need to. Shoot people PMs on qhcf or even do emails like you said. All of that being a healthy way to already deal with life's stresses. I know you could always PM me with whatever has blown your lid if you need be, if only to get it off your chest.

Sadly, i think we can all agree that CF is losing the playerbase annually. The numbers get smaller and smaller, the areas bigger and bigger, and our time less and less. I wish I could say there was a simple solution to it all, but in the end, I feel like the only thing that will change this is our own personal behavior. If the few of us that still play could just try to make everyone's experiences the best we can, maybe that returning vet will log in one day and say damn, that's quality people around, let me get back into this game.

I know I made about 4 characters recently with what I thought were stellar roles. All at level 1, 4-5 role chapters, great descriptions. We used to get like 1500, maybe 2000 xp for devoting that much thought into a character. I literally got nothing for about 60 hours combined between them, and got bitter about it. I then realized I need to stop being selfish over the little things and just try to have fun.

All I am saying is there are a lot of frustrated people in this game, but losing a quality player like you Sam is not the answer. I hope you come back and get some fun factor added to your life.

However, I believe the answer to getting a larger playerbase should be as much in the hands of us(the playerbase) as it is the IMMs. We read "doomsday" posts from players on the forums, but are we all doing our best to recruit and retain players? Obviously, the soothsayers are not helping with their rants.

We can get a solid 60 average players or more. But I firmly believe, if we are going to do this, we to need to be the advertisers. I'm talking about all of us. If you love this game as much as I do, it does not take much. Maybe mention it to friends/mentor them, or people that are interested in this sort of thing. Such as D&D, fantasy novels, games, other muds, etc. Heck, even voting on topmudsites is something.

The wonderful thing about this game is that you inspire others to roleplay better when you step up your game. Not everyone will see the same appeal or like the game for the same reasons. If we all brought even just one person into the game, that would essentially double our numbers.

I'm reminded of the first time I played. I was hanging out with friends and they showed me what they were up to and it was not long before I started rolling up characters of my own. It took many years of learning this game for me to get any good at it and even now I don't know everything (or even close).

Thanks for speaking your mind. It is good to see a post like this.

1) I've been without a cabal power now for a week. Within one minute of my first prayer about, a lower level immortal talked to me about it. That Immortal was awesome. I haven't heard #### since. That's soul-crushing. Glad to see my character isn't worth 10 seconds of an IMP's time.

The bug that caused you to be without that cabal power (and a related one for another cabal) is now FNCR, although someone will have to be online to manually fix previously-impacted characters.

I wasn't around a ton this week due to some travel, but if this sort of thing happens to a player, be persistent about prays. In this case, the fix needed a 58+ while the impacted character was online, and notes slip into the background.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I guess CF loves to hit me with rare "bugs" hahaha.

Like the role-deletion one. That still pisses me off. Oh well.

If you've been hit by this twice then you need to read help pledge. I didn't even think it was a bug personally.

So you're saying it's my fault Thror IMM-inducted me and my current happened to run into a leader at level 12?

Um...okay?

I'm not saying I'm mad at the bug, dear. I'm saying I'm mad because a totally awesome Immortal talked to me, told me to write a note to Immortal and told me it would be fixed as soon as an IMP logged on...but I saw several IMPs on and no one helped me out. That makes me feel like you guys don't give a ####...and that sucks.

Again, not mad at not having the power. Was mad that I didn't have it for a week after I let you guys know I didn't have it.

I don't have much to say in response to the majority of what you wrote. However, you did write a note to immortal on 9/27 and nobody followed up. Our bad.

In the future, bug boarding something like that and/or hitting us with some follow up prays will probably get you a result sooner.

I hope you change your mind on continuing to play CF. Regardless, the feedback is appreciated. Believe it or not we don't like having frustrated players and while sometimes that frustration makes it hard for players to communicate meaningful feedback and for Immortals to hear feedback as meaningful, I promise we're listening and while you probably won't see sweeping changes to the MUD tomorrow, feedback from players will influence the direction of the MUD.

My expectations/desires have changed.

CF no longer fits them. That could change. Who knows? I may win the lottery tomorrow and then play 100 hrs a week lol.

About the power, in an odd way, the character RP wouldn't want it. So in an IC way my character doesn't give two ####s he doesn't have the power. But OOC I'm kinda like "Well, only so many things I can do now" and "Geez, thought it would be easy to just set the power on me but I guess they don't give a hoot".

Honestly, it's just CF is a vicious game. I don't think any of the characters that have killed me have bad RP, but at the same time I know at least 2 of the players playing those characters are players I can't stand. IE They are the type of person to literally take free PKs and if you don't kiss their ass afterwards they'll loot you to the pies too. However, they are playing evil characters so in a way you don't mind it because they are supposed to be evil (however I'm pretty sure the players just get off being a ####...but neither here nor there).

It's weird. It's just frustrating that everytime I've logon'd in the last 4 days (and I'm counting non-20 min logins) I've had some type of character setback. Basically what I'm saying is the last 20 hrs of the character have had literally no progress. And that hurts. Because my time is valuable (at least, I'd like to think so).

Another thing (assuming you were the IMM that talked to me after that last PK)...I know "venting" in certain ways is not "productive" or what you are supposed to do, but CF was best when I had multiple friends that played it. So if something bad happened to you IC, you could hit one of them up on AOL or call them up (or ####, walk over to their house) and you could vent and then feel better about the game. Now...I only have like 2 people I talk to OOC that still play (and one has been on the fence). So if I get killed "cheaply" or whatever, I have nowhere to go to vent. And so I'm left with residual anger and bitterness about my last login when I login the next time. And this is why my last 4 relatively serious characters (since Laesron) have rage-deleted. Because I just get sick of all the crap (since I can't vent to anyone and release all that anger) and say "#### it. Why do I keep doing this to myself?".

I almost feel like there should be a "rant" channel. You could set it incognito so no IMMs could see it unless they wanted to (same with players) and allow people to just blow off steam. Sometimes that's important.

Final thought: I quit smoking earlier in the week. I'm having some slight health issues as well. So what I am saying is my stress level is already high at the moment and constantly having negative reinforcement from CF is not needed hahahaha.

Part of the reason it has been very frustrating for me over the last week and a half is the fact that for the first time in 2 years I've been really excited about CF. The character I am playing is a great role idea and should be fun to play in theory.

I think that's the worst part. IE If I didn't have a ton of free time, if I wasn't already stressed from quitting smoking, if I wasn't so excited to be playing this character...I probably wouldn't have minded the "bad luck" that's been happening because I would have quit out and not played for 4-5 days. But the situation now is I have a ton of free time, trying to quit smoking and a budget (so no going out a ton) so CF is a major option. So I get mad and quit. Then about 5 hrs later I want a smoke so I log back in to CF...and get mad again lol.

Edited to add: We really do need a rant channel lol. I feel 100 times better about the whole thing now that I went on that hour-long million word diatribe. Sorry for cluttering the board.

I cannot speak for all of the staff, but I am more than happy to let you rant at/vent to me if I am around. Should you ever feel like its necessary to just get it out and don't want to do it in a way that is detrimental to the fun of others (like says, tells, newbie channel) just toss up a pray and I imagine there are plenty of time when someone can just give you a few minutes to say your peace and feel better.

...I may be taking you up on this offer.

No lie, I talked to someone via email, and between that and these posts I'm no longer mad (frustrated still, but not mad).

Still think there could be a rant channel :) Especially if you could gag it as an immortal (so literally they could be ranting into thin air...which, half the time is all they want anyway).

But my brother tried to quit smoking last year. His girlfriend kept scrapping his cigarettes and was genuinely just pushing him into it. I see the guy once every 6 months if I'm lucky.

Recently I saw him again and I asked him how it was going, he lit one up. Apparently the lack of access to smokes turned him into a massive douche and after a week of him being on edge she was more or less happy to let him pick them back up for the sake of their collective sanity.

Anyway, regardless of the other CF woes, good luck quitting. Hope it works out. It can't be fun trying to kick the habit at all.

Seriously patches/gum/rX is the way to go. Then again I was only half a pack a day guy, not sure how effective it is for people that smoke more than that

I understand that.

When I first started playing, I didn't care if someone looted my things/preps etc. I played 4-5 200+ chars a year. Time wasn't ever an issue (except maybe with my girlfriend).

However, the way my life is now, I just don't have the time to continuously play CF. I got lucky and got 3 weeks to put in some serious CF time and that's why I rolled this new character. However, I'll probably only be able to play him 2 hrs a day (if that) after the next 2 weeks. And when you can only play an hour or two a day, having that time get wasted seems much worse.

Just wanted to say that I don't necessarily blame anyone for this (except for the cabal power issue...it's absurd no IMM has even approached me or talked to me about it...it's just really poor on them) except myself. My expectations of playing a game (not just CF) has changed and CF no longer seems attractive to those new expectations.

After I delete this character I'm going to post a ton of things to try and help CF (area ideas, mob descriptions, changes I think could help the game, etc) and I don't care if the Immortals use all of them and give me no credit. I've played this game for over 5000 hours so it will always hold a special place in my heart.