I thought about putting this up given the recent threads popping up around the "fun" going away from CF. This isn't in relation to descriptions or rule enforcement but more to the tedious nature of the game these days. I'm going to quote something here from QHCF:

In all seriousness, though I agree. CF used to be a social game for people without great social lives. The only thing that mattered was to technically follow the rules, find a group (because you'd get slaughtered solo) and try to grind out some exp while dodging roving bands of murderous PCs that were also in a group of 3.

Now it is write a role, desc, pk 15 before 25, 35, 41, 50. Explore 5k before 30, 26k total, observe 10k before 30, 31k total, get empowered, earn 21k worth of commerce in tiny increments because buying in bulk isn't how you get good at "commerce". Suck up to various Imms and/or RP obnoxiously enough to get noticed for Imm XP. Practice skills in every increasingly annoying ways so that you can get those PKs. Gather wands, preps, and more preps. Oh, and then, when you've maxed your skills and gathered your preps and spent your gold and observed and explored everything you can for your level, then you need to go out and find 2 other people that aren't busy doing any of the above and go fight some mobs so you can actually gain exp. and levels so you can repeat the cycle above. Fun, right?

Now some quick points....

-Part of this decline in "fun" is because of the revelation on how far you can "maximize" your experience in CF by doing the mentioned steps. There's a lot of things that give you significant edge over your opponents in a PVP-centric game that take *significant* time. Most of this posts revolves around this and the effect on veteran and new players. There's also something to be said for people with not much playing time.

-Having things like practicing skills to perfection has always been there and I honestly don't believe this has affected a lot of the game - despite the removal of key practicing items and spots, a few still exist (level gains have helped as well). New players have no idea where these places and/or gear are at so it just really alienates them more from the majority of veteran players... and if these spots are removed continually, it's just going to create more tedious time spent off in the middle of nowhere which creates less interaction in the game as a whole. When you're in the mid ranks, it's not uncommon to have a few people in your range on "quiet" mode or saying "sorry, I'm practicing". I've got a suggestion to fix this below.

-People can also bitch about wands but I'm going to sidestep that because I've just stopped playing classes that use them :) Also, I've never really had a problem with writing a role/desc as I like defining my character.

-With the above aside, there are several aspects that are nothing but tedious and have grown a lot harder over time - mainly edge tiers for pvp and how obs/expl work.

-Edges are important as they allow you to specialize your character. Without them you are at a severe disadvantage. They've become equivalent to a "talent tree" of sort if you want to use World of Warcraft as an example, albeit probably less impactful but still important. Now to get these, there are several things you need to go through... usually involve running around zones you've already seen before or level-sitting to kill people - both of which are incredibly hard on new players if not impossible, while "grindy" for the veterans... especially if you're just killing easier people for a tally. Also with the recent exclusivity change to edges it makes it even more important to do your choirs and eat your vegetables or you can be a hero without almost no edges.




Folks can discuss if I'm completely off-base here but I've got some ideas. First up, practicing.

Let's just get rid of the idea that you need to run off to the middle of nowhere to spam some things instead of interacting with other people. It really helps nothing when something generally drives people away from each other. You can tell me until you're blue in the face that it's not required but every single major killer has done it. There's a reason Daevryn and other powerhouses usually have 100% in nearly every "key" skill (or like Daevryn, obsessive to have 100% in everything). I would absolutely love to think at level 15 that I can work on perfecting defenses while continuing ranking with people and not have to say "sorry guys, got to run and practice stuff".

How do we fix this? I think learning rates should be significantly increased while in a group with other people and moreso in a pvp fight. Think of it like pack sense for everyone learning since people can point out your faults/mistakes. Perhaps the way to implement this is while ranking with other players your "skill learn" can fire off on mobs periodically? Instead of a blanket increase, this allows for you to learn important things that you cannot do in a group (trappers, spamming word of recall, certain invoker spells, etc all come to mind).

To stop abuse for players fighting each other with "dueling" to get this increase, maybe if you kill someone your "skill learn" fires once and if you die it fires two to three times. Help the losing party out in a way that actually aids them. I'd be a whole lot less bummed out if I died at lower levels if I suddenly got 6-9% in some skills I need and it'll help the newbie defend himself better next time. You want to increase interaction between people across the board and all of this is the main goal.


Now on to edges...

Here's a pretty radical idea - make them standardized. Let's get rid of the idea that you need to run scripts or through a zone you already know to get points. You know how ridiculous it is to see so many people just sitting in the docks? Running every room in the high tower or mage warehouse over and over? The benefits of exploring are already apparent as you get gear and items that help you and increased learning from the above change - leave permanent character buffs out of it. Place edges into two pools of standard and special:

-Standard edges are ones that everyone has access too and they can choose one every few levels. That way at hero, people have the same amount of edges. For the sake of argument, let's say 5 or 6. This helps newer players and veteran players be on a level playing field and it makes leveling more fun. No more grinding zones, no more grinding people, no more waiting around when you want to level. If you want to leave the point system in so people can decide to have 2-3 more powerful ones or 8-10 more cheap ones then that's fine but the whole idea is that it is standardized. You won't feel cheated if you don't do the dirtywork I mentioned before, newer players will not be so heavily penalized and you won't blame advantages of this nature on how much patience/time a person has compared to you.

-Special edges are ones that require immexp or have special conditions like Murderous Reputation. The whole idea with recent changes was to make this "gift" more impactful on a player so keep only a very few away from the general populace to hand out. I personally feel this should only really be cabal edges plus a minor few. Again you can keep the point system if you want, so people can spend immexp to buy "standard" edges also but the general idea is to make that gift special so I thought of just separating them.

I know this was suggested by Lhydia for Santa Umiron but I think it needs to be brought up. No one enjoys grinding people for points or running over the same zones over and over again. With a dwindling playerbase you want to increase interaction, not increase tedium.



Lastly, there's power creep - this is a lot broader but I think it needs to be said that it needs to start being addressed. The difference between a fully prepped player and a newer or less prepared player is incredibly high. Every single zone adds some new prep, some new kickass thing, that ups the ante a little more. "You mean you didn't have aura/shield/fly/stone/resists/ward/etc before you died"? Power creep is a bit out of control at the moment as certain classes and combinations just absolutely wipe the floor with everyone else. People used to bitch about anti-paladins but honestly there aren't enough people in the game to make charges that scary anymore.... and that requires a TON of hard work and luck while the other power combos require much less. The game has become more about what you know and did before a fight, and less about the actual fight. Losing "preps" is one of the most rage-inducing acts in the game as it can take you real life hours to regather all the things necessary to fight people.

The only thing I can think of... is start removing things or toning them down. The powerhouse classes need to be looked over because powerhouse players don't need that much of an edge over other players. We don't need instant-kill abilities or such huge damage abilities that instantly kill you... a good player can chase and endure or force longer fights.



In general I think more just needs to be done to level it out a bit for newer players. We'll probably never hit the glory days but it'd be nice if a new player wasn't so overwhelmed and at such a disadvantage. I like to think of Dota 2 as a great example of a balanced game to everyone - where the good players use their skill to win. We'll never get to that level but if I had to grind for hours to get my "ultimate" or unlock the right to purchase an item, it'd never have done well.

Many players are just not very good at understanding value. This leads them to act in incredibly inefficient ways, such as spam exploring, role writing, perfecting every skill, using every prep every fight.

Edges don't mean much, in any given fight you likely have less than ten skills come into play. You can spend 3 hours gathering preps for ten fights over the next 3 or you can find 30 fights in those 6 hours.

Would rather win ten fights than lose thirty.

Depends on class, but prepping is essential. Play an A-P without gathering wands and you're nothing but someone's +1. Play a paladin without gathering preps and you're fine - just 'co sanc' and jump in. Other classes are in the middle.

There are fights you can win with zero preps.
Fights you can win with some preps.
Fights you need all preps.

Seek out the fights you can win and you will win. Controlling the context of a battle is a skill set that pays massive dividends in letting you maximize the return on investment of your resources. Being ultra conservative does reduce your risk of loss but it comes at the opportunity cost of potential success.

For APs very few actually hit the snowball point of a weapon so while most players are always trying to achieve it they are finding success without it. You included.

Some fights you don't win specifically because you overprepped and they fled.

What I can tell you is that the fights I'd need aura+shield for with a 0 charge weapon would still go south without aura+shield but a 30 charge weapon.

Some classes (such as paladins) come out pretty strong without super gear or preps, other classes (like antipaladins) are pathetic without preps and gear but can be even stronger if you put in the legwork to gather the necessary preps and use them at the right times.

I'd say PK success is as much about what your character does out of combat as what they do in combat. Guys who guildsit then wander down eastern will be cut to pieces by guys who are out there spamming and gathering preps while the first set is guildsitting waiting for someone to group with.

Is the bit where you talk about the power ceiling getting higher making some effectively unkillable, especially if they selectively log.

I disagree that edges place you at a severe disadvantage if you don't have them. For example, the increased riposte edge vs ganks is great but not a lot of use vs that solo guy.

Parry anything needs tweaking downwards on sword specs but that's an issue with the edge, and can be addressed as such, without a change to the system.

nt

Your post is all over the place, but this is something we've been consciously addressing:

Lastly, there's power creep - this is a lot broader but I think it needs to be said that it needs to start being addressed. The difference between a fully prepped player and a newer or less prepared player is incredibly high. Every single zone adds some new prep, some new kickass thing, that ups the ante a little more. "You mean you didn't have aura/shield/fly/stone/resists/ward/etc before you died"?

1) We recently reduced the number of Edge points awarded for Observation, Exploration, and role entries because we felt the boost was driving a lot of OCD-type tedium. Factor #1 behind that change was reducing the gap between haves and have-nots-- we were seeing otherwise unremarkable characters with pile of Edges and didn't like the degree of advantage it gave. That's worked, and frankly the characters near the top of the Edge Point list are the types of characters we like to encourage-- and yet not as far ahead of novices as they used to be.

2) We reduced the rate at which expert players could amass cash by clamping down on the more exploitable currency containers. Before, there were a number of experienced players with nigh-unlimited cash flow (which translates directly into preps, the most common purchases), and novices who couldn't afford much. That's worked-- the wealthiest characters still have a lot of cash, but not so much that they can just buy 50 of everything.

3A) We revised the sleek wand system so that any character can find their wands, and there's zero advantage to having a cheater's list. The old system created an OOC tiering that's now gone.

3B) Every character has the same lifetime level of difficulty now. Before, blind luck resulted in some characters always having high-difficulty spots and other characters always having low-difficulty spots. And still other characters effectively had no spots, because their wand was in a location that they couldn't find, in part because they had no guidance to help them. That created an IC tiering that is now gone.

All of those instances had one thing in common-- many of the "haves" complained bitterly that they no longer had a massive advantage over the "have nots". We're perfectly willing to fight that battle, however, precisely because we want to cut back on the advantage they have, in order to increase retention of more novice players.

This is deliberately different from much of your plan, which trends towards uniformity-- everyone gets the same number of Edges just for power ranking, for example. We don't want various facets of the game to have no incentives-- I like that Exploration and Observation, for example, get people out of their guilds and open up an activity that can be done when a group isn't feasible.

Finally, I'm completely unapologetic about subjective rewards for well-RPed characters. If anything, I don't think we provide that sort of incentive enough, and if that reward system gets "gamed" and the MUD is overwhelmed by a swarm of characters who spend their time trying to stand out for excellent RP, that's a situation I'm happy to accept.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Not a joke, not a sarcastic comment.

I wonder if you play mortals at all, or merely act as a game administrator.

Personally, I never mind when Nep gets #### for "nerfing w-elfs after he played his".

Because, you know, he's play-testing. Should he have done it on the test port first instead of beating all of our ass? That's a discussion for a different day.

But to me, when Nep beefs APs then plays Cabdru (and tests things), or when you guys make dex changes and he rolls Queliryon, or when you guys change wood-elves etc etc etc.

However, if you have a game administrator that doesn't play the game...that to me is a much more egregious sin.

Serious question.

Main difference:

I don't make decisions on the future of the game.

Other main difference:

Not like you guys really listened to me when I was playing :) (even though you guys are trying to fix a lot of things I (and others) suggested to fix so yay!)

Also...the fact that I (and people like Laerrist/Tac and Eskelian) am not playing also says a lot. But we're not going to get into THAT discussion on this thread hopefully (as in, if I care so much about this game that I am on the forums WITHOUT EVEN PLAYING...then ####, the game must really turn me off at this time).

Edited to add: Like, I have freetime now. I don't want to go to the bar/social settings because my money situation is dicey. So, perfect time to play CF right? Haven't even tried to log on. I tried for 100 hrs last year and it was an exercise in masochism on all levels (and Immortals liked those characters!).

PS, as a scorecard so anyone knows where I stand, here are things I don't give a crap about:

Gold change (big whup, my gold-gathering skills didn't take a hit at all)
Immortal favoritism (gave up giving a #### a long time ago)
Hell (been there done that)
Full-loots (did people complaining about this actually play in the early/mid 2000s? *boggle*)


Here are things I really dislike:

Edges (and their implementation)

The grind on melee characters/the grind on mages re:wands/the grind on empowerment classes re:empowerment (IE there is literally always grind...I used to love shapeshifters because there was MINIMAL grind but I hate hate hate the new wand changes)

Wand changes (sucks bad...haven't played one since the change but I don't need to because you didn't address the systematic imbalance of the system, basically, if I were to roll a mage now I'd literally NEVER EVER go after my sleeks...like seriously NEVER)

Culture of the playerbase (Most players feel like they NEED certain things...even some really good ones! Not true...but it's the culture)

Perma-groups/OOC Permas (meh...it's one thing to use an OOC connect to rank/practice skills...it's another to land 88% of your total pks with a single character while grouped with a single, specific other character...yes I'm making mention of a specific leadered/tat'd char who recently deleted; also, much more egregious forms of this as I know for a fact that people have literally coordinated all logins/pks at times through proxies...though not for a few years)

IMMs that don't like interacting with players in a role-playing fashion (don't even know if these exist save Valg...)

IMMs that get upset when we want transparency.

IMMs that get upset about people bitching. Only reason you should get upset is if you agree with them, or if you can't elaborate your point for some reason. If anyone wants clarification of this, let me know.

The things on your dislike list: do these things make the game completely unplayable to you? In my opinion, almost all of the things you listed are things that you as a player have the ability to either be a part of or ignore.

If you do not like edges, you do not need to get them or put extra work in for them.

I assume you mean a skill practice grind for melee class, which again, is a completely optional thing. You can also play mages without wands if you do not want to invest the energy into farming them. Empowerment is arguably the easiest it has been in a really long time, even more so if you pick one of the highly active imms.

I have played a few different mages since the wand change, and I found it to be much more forgiving than in the past because I did not need to scour the mud with dozens of areas, I just had to go to 1 spot that was told to me. I would strongly suggest you at least give this change a try before you completely rule it off.

...the grind was also because of my choices in terms of what I wanted to accomplish and race/class/cabal. I could probably roll a human sword/HTH spec and not practice a damn thing and have a good time, but honestly, I can't think of a single role that would be fun to play that fits that criteria (at the moment).

About the edges: Honestly, I was discussing with another player about how if I roll a character in the next few months I'm not going to take a single edge as a form of protest. So I feel you on that point.

A lot of the things that bother me are because the game is simply different. I didn't have time to worry about grinding back in the day because my range had 25 people and 22 of them were enemies and at least 15 were grouped up in death squads. I was just trying to stay alive man! Now, as most battles will end up being relatively solo, character skill differences are much more apparent and devastating in that context. Jycenna owned me so bad as Vaedhor I literally felt like I was playing a different game (and I thought I'd own asassins!). Back in the day, I would have just grabbed any group of 3 evil chars and just ganged the piss out of her and full-looted and then prepared for her finding me and repaying the favor. Instead, in today's system, I went "Well ####...third attack is only at 95, hand to hand is at 93...better grind them up to 100 to see if that changes anything...also need more gold for preps".

The mage thing is just a complete philisophical difference. My last mage hardly ever used sleeks. I'm not into the scavenger hunt ####. I think wands should be relatively difficult to find but easy to gather (sienna/amber) or really easy to find but difficult to gather (barrier). I've consistently disagreed with the staff over the wand system since I played my first mage ever (and didn't find a single sleek...#### I didn't even know there WAS a sleek system!).

Yeah, its probably more convenient than the old system as a whole. I like the new system but HATE the fact that once you are screwed with one of the impossible spots, without help, you will never ever see a black rod again without barrier attunement.


However, if you're playing the lone scarab hero mage or whatever, and you generally don't have friends in your range willing to help you, youre going to get SCREWED eventually. Because the fact remains, there are some sleek black rod locations that are impossible to get solo. (Heres looking at you, "ice queen" sleek black location. Good luck getting that one solo even if you have full ABS up.)


Id remove maybe, 4-5 spots altogether for the black rods, and honestly, I couldn't think of a better system at that point. If the hard spots were kept in, the ones you can probably take if you rest 4 or 5 times the fight, but the impossible ones taken out, (you guys know the ones im talking about) the wand system would be near perfect. Even I can't deny that.

So yeah, there has been a huge step in the right direction. A huge step. But there is some fine tuning still needed to be done before it's a smooth system.



Edited to add....My idea is this. If the guildmaster gives you a tip for a wand, that you KNOW you cant get, like no way...maybe add a "bribe" system or whatever, maybe for 50 or 100 gold you can pass over that spot, and it just gives you a new randomized wand spot to go after. Maybe you can only bribe once every 48 game hours. It would completely solve the problem of impossible wand spots, without taking any out, and it would provide a costly way to at least get a shot at the next wand. I think that would be a really really good system

Or maybe I just hated that spot because I had it with a mage with only one major form and no allies. Who knows!

nt

NT

NT

One of the things Zulg said in his goodbye thread when he went away was something along the lines of, "I'm going to spend time working on games I'd want to play." Which makes me wonder, as an IMP, why wasn't he doing that with CF? If people are making game design decisions that don't play, or want to play the game... What sense does that make?

This isn't an attack against Valg. Even if his job was an administrator who's sole purpose was to heard cats (Imms) into getting #### done, that would have value.

Thank you for the reasoned response. Hopefully I can do the same.

>Your post is all over the place, but this is something we've
>been consciously addressing:
>
>Lastly, there's power creep - this is a lot broader but I
>think it needs to be said that it needs to start being
>addressed. The difference between a fully prepped player and a
>newer or less prepared player is incredibly high. Every single
>zone adds some new prep, some new kickass thing, that ups the
>ante a little more. "You mean you didn't have
>aura/shield/fly/stone/resists/ward/etc before you died"?
>
>1) We recently reduced the number of Edge points awarded for
>Observation, Exploration, and role entries because we felt the
>boost was driving a lot of OCD-type tedium. Factor #1 behind
>that change was reducing the gap between haves and have-nots--
>we were seeing otherwise unremarkable characters with pile of
>Edges and didn't like the degree of advantage it gave. That's
>worked, and frankly the characters near the top of the Edge
>Point list are the types of characters we like to encourage--
>and yet not as far ahead of novices as they used to be.

I don't recall seeing a lot of complaining about reduced Role XP, but it could be I glossed over that because I don't like writing Roles. I also don't like Obs/Exp XP (in fact when it was introduced I said it would be botted/scripted) but it doesn't feel like the reward was reduced, it is still just as relatively powerful, where as Role XP maxes out at a (fairly) low level, it takes twice as much Obs/Exp as before.

I'm glad you are checking to see if you changes had the desired effect, but I'm disappointed the reasoning wasn't made more clear when the change was introduced and in the specifics of the change, not that it is having the desired effect.

>2) We reduced the rate at which expert players could amass
>cash by clamping down on the more exploitable currency
>containers. Before, there were a number of experienced
>players with nigh-unlimited cash flow (which translates
>directly into preps, the most common purchases), and novices
>who couldn't afford much. That's worked-- the wealthiest
>characters still have a lot of cash, but not so much that they
>can just buy 50 of everything.

I've never seen a problem with this, but that usually because outside of basic preps (which are generally cheap enough) I find very little use for gold. If this change had been accompanied by an increase in useful buy-able gear I'd be more excited. I imagine this is a change that is coming, but of all the things that I take into account before or during a PK fight, I've never considered how much gold the other person has to be a significant factor.

>3A) We revised the sleek wand system so that any character can
>find their wands, and there's zero advantage to having a
>cheater's list. The old system created an OOC tiering that's
>now gone.

Excellent. I think the biggest problem I'd have with this is that some locations are unattainable solo and that means some play styles, including being the underdog, aren't as viable as before.

Overall, I think this is probably a good change, even if my only mage since didn't get to explore it. I just wish the spots were more normalized.

>3B) Every character has the same lifetime level of difficulty
>now. Before, blind luck resulted in some characters always
>having high-difficulty spots and other characters always
>having low-difficulty spots. And still other characters
>effectively had no spots, because their wand was in a location
>that they couldn't find, in part because they had no guidance
>to help them. That created an IC tiering that is now gone.

Again, this is very good.

>All of those instances had one thing in common-- many of the
>"haves" complained bitterly that they no longer had a massive
>advantage over the "have nots". We're perfectly willing to
>fight that battle, however, precisely because we want to cut
>back on the advantage they have, in order to increase
>retention of more novice players.

Excellent. Except a novice player has to conquer a hundred higher hurdles before wands come in to play and 1% slash resistance doesn't help :P. I'm glad for the change, but I'd rather see crappy gear go away so I don't have to outfit newbs than know that on the off chance they make it to 35 as a mage they won't have an impossible wand spot.

Again, I'm guessing this is in the works, but the recent Troglodyte change suggests (to me) that it won't go nearly far enough.

>This is deliberately different from much of your plan, which
>trends towards uniformity-- everyone gets the same number of
>Edges just for power ranking, for example. We don't want
>various facets of the game to have no incentives-- I like that
>Exploration and Observation, for example, get people out of
>their guilds and open up an activity that can be done when a
>group isn't feasible.

I don't disagree with your point, so much as your argument. Obs/Exp is an entirely solo experience. At least in a guild I might be trying to talk to someone. And most of the game is based around uniform mechanics customized to make wildly difference characters. Why are edges fundamentally different from weapon specs for warriors?

>Finally, I'm completely unapologetic about subjective rewards
>for well-RPed characters. If anything, I don't think we
>provide that sort of incentive enough, and if that reward
>system gets "gamed" and the MUD is overwhelmed by a swarm of
>characters who spend their time trying to stand out for
>excellent RP, that's a situation I'm happy to accept.

I again agree with your point, but think that as a historically not player interactive IMM, I'd take this more seriously from someone who has to routinely deal with RP-whores. Characters that are easily as annoying as the quiet mode murder ranger camping Eregion, but killing them doesn't even grant satisfaction since they'll just keep RPing at you.

Thanks for the post Valg. This is still a terrible medium for a discussion.

For most classes. For example, glymarachs is a tough ask for almost any build.

>Your post is all over the place, but this is something we've
>been consciously addressing:

True, but you failed to address probably the better suggestion which was practicing rates in groups and "skill learn" procs in pvp/pve entirely... you've become Daevryn with his ability to just avoid a major piece of a post.

You may have reduced the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" as you said you wanted, but you in general dropped the amount of edges. In general, I feel like edges are a fun aspect of the game... and it seems like you removed it. If you went from a range of 2-12 to 1-6, you're making it that much more important to do the work to get them. And it is work.

>This is deliberately different from much of your plan, which
>trends towards uniformity-- everyone gets the same number of
>Edges just for power ranking, for example. We don't want
>various facets of the game to have no incentives-- I like that
>Exploration and Observation, for example, get people out of
>their guilds and open up an activity that can be done when a
>group isn't feasible.

Here is where I'm curious about your answer if you actually play this game. There's nothing RP about running through zones you've already done before, using triggers for boats or rerunning the same zone. Do you seriously find any fun in doing this? If it was actually exploring something I haven't done thousands of times in the fifteen+ years I've played, sure, but it really isn't when it has to be lower level zones to do before certain levels. I'd much rather hang out in the Inn and RP or talk to some visible Immortal/cabal leader... or go spam practice than go look at the unfinished kobold cave again. Not to mention that 99% of these zones are off the path, making people less likely to interact/fight. People have plenty to do outside their guilds - your chore for edge-work is a stick, not a carrot.

And uniformity is a good thing for newer players, you level the playing field for people. If you want your special snowflakes to be better, that's fine, but grinding zones and kills is *not* a special snowflake - it's teaching people that the game is a grindfest of OCD behavior.

>Finally, I'm completely unapologetic about subjective rewards
>for well-RPed characters. If anything, I don't think we
>provide that sort of incentive enough, and if that reward
>system gets "gamed" and the MUD is overwhelmed by a swarm of
>characters who spend their time trying to stand out for
>excellent RP, that's a situation I'm happy to accept.

There's nothing RP-centric about saying "you need to kill 10 people before you rank" when you may not have anyone in your range, or want to kill anyone. When half or more of the MUDs current players are hero, and you're sitting trying to find the one guy in your range to kill before rank so you can be competitive... you're forcing a behavior that isn't RP-directed.

People would be more likely to RP if the power gap wasn't so huge, that it requires you to do things away from other people like spamming, looking over zones, and gathering preps/gold.

Taking away some of the gold spots was a pain - and here's why your thought process is a bit off: You made it harder to get gold but you didn't lessen what the gold was used for. The same preps still exist and you still need them. So you're still going to get gold to get them, it just takes you longer. I don't know of a single vet who doesn't have the same exact prep bag - maybe less of the same items but the same items.

That's probably at the heart of all of this. You made it harder to obtain gold, harder to practice, and harder to get edges but you did NOTHING to make them less powerful. All you did was raise the bar which is a huge turn off for people.

But #### fun, CF isn't a game after all, it is a life choice.

I can actually use gold to buy high end gear. Previously gold had so little value you couldn't use it to trade with pcs.

These are all GREAT changes. Even the ones that suck for us personally and believe me, a lot affected me indirectly as well.

When trying to get friends or new players to come on board...the learning curve is just insane. Its still significant...enough that we have a LOT to give us an advantage still, but these changes are ALL for the better.

Did you know I've played off and on since 1994 and NEVER played a mage. The reason? I didn't use ooc chatrooms and had NO knowledge of wands. Not a single wand.

And it was daunting to me as a "new mage player" that I did not know the secret spots. Its the same reason I've never played an AP (That and my non-perfection agressiveness in pkilling) Maybe I can now try one of those classes soon. I will STILL no less than mages that know the static locations...but maybe knowing some areas will help me deduct and narrow the gap.

---------

Also, some personal experience. I played Vhree/Elasia and on BOTH characters I was given over TEN THOUSAND gold through selling items to rich thieves and even warriors.

This was broken.

I never farmed for gold once. And I was able to just find some amazing item, and sell it to a character who could get unlimited gold farming.

The result? I would take 200 or 300 of my gold and go by 50 healing potions. So now I'd be fighting some decent outlander character. Who cares if they had whispers of the great siege?

I could just flee and quaff five healing potions and it was like an instant immortal restore.

Yegrut died at least a few times from that. Several villagers died chasing me down to find me full healed.

While neither I NOR you wants tedium....anything that makes the economy less "broken" is a good thing.

(Oh...and this DEFINITATELY made the HAVES and the HAVENOTS. I wouldn't sell any items for less than 200 gold. This would SHOCK the havenots...and all the HAVES would just shrug and offer me hundreds of gold in 3 seconds.)

.

A lot of the gold problems had to do with gambling... and most still exist. Players with the right items can basically make infinite gold.

I assure you no one got 10,000 gold at only 4-5 gold a time which is the area he is talking about fixing.

We changed more gold spots (many far richer) than the one I think you're referring to, which itself was also just plain buggy.

Also, we did make some slight adjustments to gambling a few months ago. I wrote a bot to gamble with essentially unlimited gold and 25 luck and still averaged out at either a loss or break even. If you can afford to gamble a lot of gold per roll and the RNG likes you then it's still possible to make a killing, but like I said we did make some adjustments. It's also worth pointing out that one of the reasons people were able to throw hundreds of gold at the gambler per session was because of the gold spots we fixed. If we continue to see problems with gambling we'll continue to adjust.

Z

SKILLS
You ignored the most important part of his post. Getting skills up is a pain in the ass and is not social. You may say you don't have to do it, but that's not what reality. The difference between 65% and 100% can mean death versus win many times. I like his suggestion and it would keep players playing together so I will list the ones, with more details, that I like.

I'm laying out things that I feel would make the game more fun again. Things that would bring people, including me back.

1. I'd argue that the entire game should have the 25% learning bonus we had the other day as the base.

2. Grouped players get bonus to skill gains. Two players, you get 25% bonus. Three player group you'd get 50% bonus.

3. Skill learn fires for a 1-3% during combat sometimes so you can get skill ups on non combat abilities during combat. It would continue to work like current system that its not guaranteed to fire on what you want. You can make certain ones impossible or hard to learn that way that don't fit, like Assassinate.

4. Learn defenses by watching combat much like weapon skills currently.

5. I do kinda like his idea for the skill learn bonus after kill/death but I'd like to see it not fire more than once every 6 hours or so and last only 1 hour or so. Otherwise people could exploit it.

EDGES
As for his other points, I like his edge point ideas personally.
1. Cabal edges points from raid/retrieve/kills in cabals go to cabal edges.

2. Immexp edge points go towards special edges or any other edges.(can count as any type of edge point as well as special edges)

3. Roleexp goes towards cosemetic edges. emote in form, long desct request, title request. When you choose this edge you choose the string and it gets sent up for imm approval.

4. Observation/exploration exp could go towards specific things like movement, resting, etc edges.

5. Standard class edges would be on a standardized system where each 5 levels you get a set amount of points. Edges would have specific costs and you could choose where to put them.

WANDS
I think the main problem most have with this system is that sometimes, and from what I've seen in cabal chatters many times, the wands get put in impossible places for some. While others have them in easy places. Putting them in the dragon towers is really kinda crappy and makes those players not even want to log in. So here is my suggestion.

1. Make them uniform with fairly consistent difficulty.

2. Aura fairly easy to get. A level 30 should be able to manage it.

3. Shield a bit more moderately difficult. Should be able to get it around 40.

4. Barrier fairly difficult, but doable solo if you work hard for it, possibly needing to use your aura and shield to get. Possibly could get it in the 40s if you use your other wands and are decently skilled, otherwise need to be heroish.

Putting them in level 51+ area explores is a bit much. Beyond that, I do kinda like the new system.

>SKILLS
>You ignored the most important part of his post. Getting
>skills up is a pain in the ass and is not social. You may say
>you don't have to do it, but that's not what reality. The
>difference between 65% and 100% can mean death versus win many
>times. I like his suggestion and it would keep players playing
>together so I will list the ones, with more details, that I
>like.

I agree with the general sentiment of this. Practiced skills aren't required (and people with mediocre skill percentages often win fights), but on the whole it's reasonable to expect people to care about their skills and be concerned with improving them.

However, skill practice has only gotten easier and easier over the years. You could argue that's not true for maybe a dozen players who obsessed over various 'tricks' that have been removed or toned down, but I'm not going to bother considering that. Selectable skill gains on level, weapon improvement through observation, xpadd and learning bonuses are all examples of why.

We're not interested in skill improvement being so fast or easy that nobody thinks twice before throwing all their not-so-hard earned work away.

>I'm laying out things that I feel would make the game more fun
>again. Things that would bring people, including me back.
>
>1. I'd argue that the entire game should have the 25% learning
>bonus we had the other day as the base.

That doesn't make sense to me and I'd bet my mortgage if we did this, in six months people would be insisting that another X% in imperative to the success of the MUD. And again and again and again.

>2. Grouped players get bonus to skill gains. Two players, you
>get 25% bonus. Three player group you'd get 50% bonus.

I'm going with no on this, but if I wasn't, I'd still say your numbers are absurd.

>3. Skill learn fires for a 1-3% during combat sometimes so you
>can get skill ups on non combat abilities during combat. It
>would continue to work like current system that its not
>guaranteed to fire on what you want. You can make certain ones
>impossible or hard to learn that way that don't fit, like
>Assassinate.

Sorry, no.

>4. Learn defenses by watching combat much like weapon skills
>currently.

I've mused over this before, though not just for defenses. I'll investigate how difficult it would be to 'learn by observation' at a broader level. Even if we did something like that though, the rates would be considerably lower than performing the abilities yourself.

>5. I do kinda like his idea for the skill learn bonus after
>kill/death but I'd like to see it not fire more than once
>every 6 hours or so and last only 1 hour or so. Otherwise
>people could exploit it.

Not interested.

>EDGES
>As for his other points, I like his edge point ideas
>personally.
>1. Cabal edges points from raid/retrieve/kills in cabals go to
>cabal edges.

I don't really see the value here in terms of work vs. reward. We would also need to tone down a number of cabal edges as they were designed with the assumption in mind that players would never be able to pick them.

>2. Immexp edge points go towards special edges or any other
>edges.(can count as any type of edge point as well as special
>edges)

Same deal. I'm not interested in categorizing edges and only allowing people to buy edges in a category with points earned a specific way.

>3. Roleexp goes towards cosemetic edges. emote in form, long
>desct request, title request. When you choose this edge you
>choose the string and it gets sent up for imm approval.

See #2.

>4. Observation/exploration exp could go towards specific
>things like movement, resting, etc edges.

See #2.

>5. Standard class edges would be on a standardized system
>where each 5 levels you get a set amount of points. Edges
>would have specific costs and you could choose where to put
>them.

We already give 'free trophies' for things like reaching certain levels or growing old. I'm not interested in giving out more free edge points and I'm not interested in shifting the design of edges away from rewarding certain behaviors and accomplishments toward what you're describing. Sorry.

>WANDS
>I think the main problem most have with this system is that
>sometimes, and from what I've seen in cabal chatters many
>times, the wands get put in impossible places for some. While
>others have them in easy places. Putting them in the dragon
>towers is really kinda crappy and makes those players not even
>want to log in. So here is my suggestion.
>
>1. Make them uniform with fairly consistent difficulty.

I think this is good advice in general, but I also see the value in outliers. If almost any mage build is happy with every spot then we're doing it wrong. Every now and then a mage should get hung up on a spot, especially now that we're telling them where to go.

>2. Aura fairly easy to get. A level 30 should be able to
>manage it.

I agree, and I think many level 30 mages can 'manage' it. Many of them probably cannot consistently get their sleek aura wands without much risk, but that's not the same thing.

>3. Shield a bit more moderately difficult. Should be able to
>get it around 40.

Eh.

>4. Barrier fairly difficult, but doable solo if you work hard
>for it, possibly needing to use your aura and shield to get.
>Possibly could get it in the 40s if you use your other wands
>and are decently skilled, otherwise need to be heroish.

I think this is an accurate description of reality as often as we'd like it to be (again, I think outliers are good).

>Putting them in level 51+ area explores is a bit much. Beyond
>that, I do kinda like the new system.

Yeah that aggravates me too, but again as a player I realize it's what makes up for the majority of the spots, the ones I'm content if not happy to be assigned.

But considering how little negative feedback we hear these days about the system (especially relative to before) and the fact that as a player trying to remain objective I don't have a legitimate gripe with the new system I probably won't be the person messing with wand locations any time soon.

...While skill learning relative to what it cost you years ago may have gone down...compared to comparable games available it's still very high.

Most games have zero or minimal skill learning. This game one can expect to spend at least 40 hours spamming skills over the life of their character and more if they have low intelligence and the whole time they're at a non-trivial disadvantage to people who level sit with perfected skills.

That "meta" doesn't work in 2015 like it might have worked in 1998. I encourage you to worry less about historical standards for CF and consider the relative time investment compared with other popular current games.

The big thing about CF is that your characters *DIE PERMANENTLY*. I feel like your role and descriptions and actual interactions/leveling should be your largest time investments with skill spamming relatively small/trivial by comparison. This forces you to interact with other people and roleplay.

Every hour you're skill spamming by necessity you're doing nothing else and hiding from everyone else in the game.

Edited for emphasis on the last sentence.

Skill spamming is not necessity, its purely optional and it will not turn you into an unstoppable ball of death if you as a player do not possess the other things that are important in being pk successful.

The other variables that tend to carry more weight than skill % fall onto things like prep knowledge, gear knowledge, timing of your skills, the ability to run, the ability to chase, the ability to locate pk.

Competitive people quibble about classes that have a 10dps difference in other games. You think they're going to accept a 20%+ failure margin difference in a game that includes gear loss and permanent death for failing a skill check?

Saying it's optional is like saying wearing gear is optional.

Edited to add : Technically you can play the game as someone with all unlimited gear, no skills practiced to perfection or high 90s and no investment at all in preps. And the rest of the playerbase will lovingly refer to you as 'punching bag' and multikill you for the stat padding. That's CF.

It depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want to be competitive the time investment is very very low. If you want to be unstoppable and never die while killing everyone that thinks about fighting you then sure, you might want to sink a little time into skill practice.

At the end of the day, regardless of how much time you sink into skill mastery or prep bags or mindless grinding to get that last edge point for that "must have" edge, you are still probably going to get pked a lot by the people who are just flat out better at the game with the things that matter.

The key example is always versus an AP or Necromancer. If you miss a cranial or a bash there's a pretty high chance you'll get slept. Once you're slept, there's a really good chance you'll die. Once you die, there's a pretty fair chance any good gear you had is now gone. Once your good gear is gone, there's a pretty decent chance you're at a 50% disadvantage in raw stats versus any similar warrior-type class to you.

So on.

When I say competitive I mean it in the normal sense of the word "as good as or better than others of a comparable nature" (courtesy of Google). That's how everyone else means it too. They don't mean it as "if everything flows properly, you have the possibility of winning a fight". Do you really think a warrior in unlimited gear with unpracticed skills is competitive with other warriors at similar level who has perfected skills and hasn't lost gear from dying? Because...mathematically it's not even close.

Edited to add : I'd suggest, even if you don't publish the results...you guys start tracking things like DPS and DTPS in fights along with gear and skills. If that gap is within 10-15% - you can argue it's comparable. But it's...not. Not by a long shot.

100% bash and 100% cranial can still miss, which kind of invalidates your first point. Know what does help against your first point though? Knowing about some handy saves items or ways to counter sleep though either certain items or tricks like tracking a mob after you to wake you when you are slept.

I certainly do think that you have a very good chance as a fresh out of the box hero warrior against a long standing high hour warrior. There are way more variables involved in pk than just skill % and gear worn.

Also, since player skill varies its truly impossible to have a 100% apples to apples comparison in order to properly gauge how competitive a pk fight is.

You know as well as I do that highly available saves gear pre-50 is at the cost of all your damage and HP. You can't run around in svs gear and still have enough HP and DPS to deal with an AP more often than not, unless your gear is at a certain level of quality to begin with...and you get that way by not dying and not missing bashes on people who are near death.

I'm not even sure why we're debating this. The Twists and Neps of the world don't run around with 80% parry. Practice what thy preaches. I've done it and I've won fights but it's not "comparable" - it's at a massive disadvantage that has to be overcome with a huge skill gap.

I feel like we have a huge disconnect because we might be talking about different things. You first mentioned you only needed the skill % to win those fights because missing said skill would get you killed. When that point was countered, you are now saying something different.

You mentioned comparable, but then you pick two names who are leaps and bounds ahead of most people who play CF for your examples.

You didn't counter the point. Missing bash 40% of the time versus 10% of the time is not comparable. Having 400HP when slept versus having 800HP when slept is not comparable. One you'll survive and the other you will not.

I picked those two because they're administrators. There's plenty of players that also perfect their skills but that wouldn't illustrate my point that you guys yourselves do not run around in unlimited gear with unpracticed skills.

Your basic point is that you don't *need* to perfect your skills or spells to compete and my point has been and still is that being at a disadvantage of 50%+ is not "competing". It's either picking on newbies or getting your ass handed to you.

I'll also add in that...the way you win fights in CF is always the same:

1) Minimize the chances of missing key skills and spells (perfect them).

2) Maximize your margin of error by increasing your DPS and HP - you want to create a margin of error to account for the randomness of attack and defense rolls. This is a straight up gear check and skill check.

3) Mitigate their attacks by lagging them if necessary or cripple them until they are no longer competitive in terms of DPS/HP. This is a skill/prep check.

4) Lag enemy until dead or kill them with DoTs that they don't have time to heal. This is a skill/prep check.

Alternatively some classes with massive nukes can just nuke spam - but that requires you be able to take out a sizable chunk of health every time you do it - enough that they won't have a chance to flee.

Every single element of fighting, to maximize your chances, requires a grind. You can't succeed without handling the mechanical nature of the RNG by stacking odds in your favor.

So you can't come out and say that "skill practice and preps" aren't necessary - because if you take that approach you're guaranteeing that you will lose to everyone who isn't a total newbie (read - everyone that has a reasonable idea of what strategy you'll be taking to fight them).

You feel like skills and preps are required to be "competitive" where I feel they are not. I am almost always a 2:1 ratio guy on chars I stick out and I spend basically no time to gather preps or to master skills. If you do not believe that a 2:1 ratio is "successful in pk" then I don't really know what else to say.

I think the issue here is what is meant by the word competitive.

I do not think anyone could argue that CF is not competitive as it stands but what I think the point that Eskelian's is trying to make is more to do is the game also fair. What I mean by fairness in this sense is what factors determine the outcome of a PVP situation.

In a game with near perfect fairness, player skill, should be the only thing (besides a little luck) that effects the outcome of a game, chess would be a good example of this.

I would argue CF is pretty fair, where player skill is the most important factor determining the outcome of a PVP encounter.

However, there are other important factors that can have an impact on the outcome. In CF, these would be skill %, gear differences, and prep usage (not necessarily exclusive), these are not related to a players skill but can (and do) impact the outcomes of any given PVP encounter.

Now, I would argue skill does trump these but the question is by how much? How much of an advantage is it possible to have assuming equal skill levels but widely different skill %, gear, or preps, etc.?

I can't answer that last question because it is difficult to get good data to look at, but you could run simulations in a test environment to at least as Eskelian suggests, look at the differences in DPS that having different skill % conveys.

Also, it does no good to look at individual performance (such as your own) and argue its proof that the game is fair (in the way I defined it) because we can't test the relative difference bewtween skill levels of your opponents easily. I would assume you are an above average player which likely accounts for your relative success even though you handicap yourself with low skills and less then optimal gear.

Player skill is indeed the major factor in PK when the difference between
two players skill is big.

As player skill difference gets smaller, then the OTHER factors
get SIGNIFICANTLY more important to the point where 2 players at the
top or near the top of the player skill ladder (which means PERFECT tactics,
no command waste, no loss of combat rounds, skill timing to take advantage
of lag on both sides etc) have to take into serious consideration skill % ,
preps and gear etc.

In some cases, a player of lower skill than another, can rely on preps/gear/skill %
to overcome this difference. Some classes (necromancers, bards, assassins, rangers,
thieves maybe) allow you to do this better than others (warriors). With some classes,
the player skill gap that can be "plugged" in this fashion can be significant.

It's not clear cut as in some cases, one can simply invest more TIME (to try and
trap the other person and maneuver himself to a more favorable position,
using ganks also applies here) to try and overcome the prep/skill/gear equation
but of course nobody wants to WASTE more time than necessary. Some matchups and
encounters will happen a minimum number of times (as one player may be actively
trying to avoid fighting the other), so one player might be looking to absolutely
maximize his chances of killing the other person, knowing that he won't have many
opportunities to do so.

Skill % and preps/gear become very important when two similar or identical builds
duke it out (and players are of similar skill).

In some other cases, skill % becomes EXTREMELY important. An example:

Ranger who relies on wasps/mosquitos a lot (hard to land skills) absolutely
NEEDS to practice wasps/mosquitos to 100% (to completely eliminate losing
concentration during casting, thus maximizing the chances of the skill landing).
I think this specific example applies to other skills and classes as well.

The difference between having the skill at 99% and 100% is significant, due to
non-linear failure rate. With wasps at 99%, it felt as if I was losing concentration a
LOT more than 1 time out of 100. This alone is a major incentive to practice
this and any other similar skill to 100%.

Another example:

Spam-practicing skills to 100% early helps 'guide' skill learn (by taking away skills
that the skill learn randomizer can pick from) to other skills, some of them
extremely hard to impossible to improve through spamming.

TLDR; Saying player skill is most important factor in PK is an overstatement, imo,
and is not taking into account the myriad of counter-examples (some of which
I mentioned, there are more). It's also not taking account that some people play
the game with the intention to kill as many others as possible. For this kind
of player, maximizing killing rate is obviously very important thus ALL factors
directly under his control (skill %, gear, preps) will be 'tuned' to that effect.

Is I don't measure kill vs death for 'competitiveness'. Kill vs death I'm generally like 10:1. That doesn't include fleeing though and I flee quite a bit when my skills are failing and that impacts my total kill count significantly if not my PK ratio.

A class that's really good at running away a lot isn't competitive, you need to look at the metrics at a bit more of a broader understanding than that.

Edited to add : On a char where my gear is awful and I haven't practiced stuff I might be 10:1 with only 10 kills or 5:1 with only 5 kills. On a char where I have those things in order, the kill count will be much higher - but a ratio itself is a reflection of my risk acceptance and knowledge of mechanics more than whether or not my character is balanced against another. I tend to leave if I'm getting destroyed.

If I'm bashing someone I'd rather be enlarged with 80% bash than have 100% bash and the other guy be enlarged. And that comes down to prepping, awareness, and all that stuff.

Of course I'm going to be enlarged with 100% bash but this is a hypothetical.

No one besides newbies and ragers are going to let you bash them at a size gap. They're going to reduce or enlarge themselves to make it a moot point - or they're going to have better gear, defenses and weapon skills than you and not care if you bash them.

Comparable means "as good or better than" - it doesn't mean you have "a shot". Someone with 80% parry is not as good or better than someone with 100% parry. Someone with a set of midnight dragon gear is not "as good or better than" someone with a full set of darkened platemail.

And it's not even close.

Someone with a highly limited weapon and good gear might have 400% svs difference, 200% damroll difference and 50% weapon avg. difference to someone with an unlimited set. Someone will fully perfected skills might have an effective hitrate 200% more effective than someone with 80% in that skill in any given fight - at higher damage - for enhanced effect.

This is something the Imms have known for a long time - which is why their chars have perfected skills and spells. It makes a huge difference in a fight. You might only get someone in a bad situation a couple times over your entire life - to miss a bash or pincer or something in that scenario is catastrophic.

Perhaps I should shut up so it stays that way.

... And I've ever only had 2 chars spam skills! (And I've NEVER EVER spammed skills until they've been perfected.) I'm just too damned lazy, at most I've gotten weapons and defenses up to 90%+ and left them there to perfect themselves. After 100-150 hours they're usally perfect by themselves, and all the vital skills/spells I've gotten up waaaay pre-lvl 51 without spam but regular use when needed when lvling, gathering gear, exploring and PKing.

Sure thing, I've most likely lost a fight or two due to someone having better skill % than me, but overall, it's marginal considering the vast amount of successful or semi-succesful chars I've had.

>...While skill learning relative to what it cost you years
>ago may have gone down...compared to comparable games
>available it's still very high.
>
>Most games have zero or minimal skill learning. This game one
>can expect to spend at least 40 hours spamming skills over the
>life of their character and more if they have low intelligence
>and the whole time they're at a non-trivial disadvantage to
>people who level sit with perfected skills.

I think 40 hours is a huge exaggeration, both in terms of what's actually necessary to succeed and the amount of time the vast majority of players spend (exclusively) working on skills. No matter what there will always be a disparity between what's good enough and what's overkill and we'll always have a subset of player who insist on aiming for the latter every single time and that's their prerogative.

>That "meta" doesn't work in 2015 like it might have worked in
>1998. I encourage you to worry less about historical
>standards for CF and consider the relative time investment
>compared with other popular current games.

My point was more that if trends are to be considered, every time we relinquish an inch our more vocal players are going to demand another mile. I think history is a good precedent but agree that it is not necessarily a valid basis for design decisions today in and of itself.

>The big thing about CF is that your characters *DIE
>PERMANENTLY*. I feel like your role and descriptions and
>actual interactions/leveling should be your largest time
>investments with skill spamming relatively small/trivial by
>comparison. This forces you to interact with other people and
>roleplay.

I don't disagree with this sentiment. Presumably you're implying we're failing at this and I would say that if we are, it's not nearly by the margin that you or some other people think. I would disagree that mechanical character development should be trivial, though. Again, it's by design that you cannot realistically build a character in a few days that is going to be on even footing with a character that has been around for a few weeks.

>Every hour you're skill spamming by necessity you're doing
>nothing else and hiding from everyone else in the game.

Yep, and this has been an unintended side effect of how skills work for a long time. We try to counter this in a number of ways but so far we evidently haven't come up with a better solution that we're comfortable with (i.e., yes people would probably interact more if flurry could be perfected in an hour but we're not agreeable to that).

>Edited for emphasis on the last sentence.

"My point was more that if trends are to be considered, every time we relinquish an inch our more vocal players are going to demand another mile. I think history is a good precedent but agree that it is not necessarily a valid basis for design decisions today in and of itself."

Do it because it is the right decision to make, regardless of complaints. Consider the impossible and work backward to a good solution.


Consider what the impact would be if you could practice, in your guild, every skill/spell to 100% given the current level of % per point of int. Would that really break the game?

I personally don't think so. Hell, the number of invokers would skyrocket, but who cares? At the end of the day, trains and practices are temporary and would allow me a very clear cost benefit choice. Do I want to spend 10hp on getting assassin kicks to 91%, or 10-20 hours? 100hp for an invoker that I don't have to spam? Sure.

There are numerous options for less drastic measures as well. Does my skill % in detect invis really affect my "investment" into a character? No. Is there any reason this spell should fail past level 10? Not that I can think of...

Unless you are an elf or drow or a class like conjurer where it just doesn't matter much. A single skill can take over 5 hours for a giant to get to the high 90s.

Invokers can easily spend over 100 hours to even get to the point they can be competitive because it IS required. That's time that spent working could more than pay for most decent mortgages and then some.

I don't think it should be super quick or super easy to get 100% any everything, I just think there should be far better ways to do it while interacting with other players, including non combat skills.

Maybe it's because of a lot of us are getting older. Our time starts to feel more precious. These things bother us more now than they did when we were young, had tons of time, and felt our lives were just starting. Now, I just feel like I am wasting valuable life when I would sit there practicing. I really liked the feel of learning staff by using one and fighting mobs that have them. That is a step in the right directions, but there should be other options similar to that for most skills/spells/communes. Just my own opinion of course and I express it because I want how I feel to be known. If the majority, and especially the Imms, disagree. So be it. I move on as I have already decided due to these various things as do many others.

When I started you could perfect your skills really quickly and easily as you could practice on low level and immune mobs. So you could go into the air of Galadon and gather all birds or Kobold cavern and get defenses done in an hour.

When I started CF had a way more casual approach to OOC so it was way easier to get help with things. These days the damn newbie quest in the caverns is regarded as secret and people are getting yelled at if they are asking questions about it.

When I started there were not as many secrets and it was pretty ok to do a map of something like Elven Vaults even if it was an area explore. These days more and more powerful things come from area explore / quests and they are seen as incredibly secret so it is almost impossible to actually learn what advantages the "in crowd" (IMMS and certain players) has.

When I started players dependence on IMMS to get an advantage was pretty minimal. Quest forms and skills were rare and that has changed towards a lot is hinging on IMMS to gain an advantage with several classes.

When I started I as a newbie could always get things like jeweled broadswords (that also was better) because they were unlimited.

I understand that these are design decisions that has been made and several are probably really good for your idea of the game. But I also feel that the vision of creating a realistic fantasy world is not always aligned with those that play the game. The community around CF is incredibly limited these days and I think creating maps, guides and adding items to item databases is vital to retain newbies but the vibe you get from IMMS has more or less squashed those attempts so people have grown tired of it.

>When I started you could perfect your skills really quickly
>and easily as you could practice on low level and immune mobs.
>So you could go into the air of Galadon and gather all birds
>or Kobold cavern and get defenses done in an hour.
>
>When I started CF had a way more casual approach to OOC so it
>was way easier to get help with things. These days the damn
>newbie quest in the caverns is regarded as secret and people
>are getting yelled at if they are asking questions about it.

Be all this as it may, you're still describing a CF from a long time ago that hasn't reflected our vision of the game for the better part of two decades.

Honestly, if you think that CF was 'better' when you could buy 150 puppies to wail on you in Galadon then I'm sorry but I just don't think we're going to see eye to eye on much.

>When I started there were not as many secrets and it was
>pretty ok to do a map of something like Elven Vaults even if
>it was an area explore. These days more and more powerful
>things come from area explore / quests and they are seen as
>incredibly secret so it is almost impossible to actually learn
>what advantages the "in crowd" (IMMS and certain players)
>has.

Again, you have to go back a lot of years to get to a time when publicly discussing or sharing info about explore areas and such was cool, if it ever was (before my time).

>When I started players dependence on IMMS to get an advantage
>was pretty minimal. Quest forms and skills were rare and that
>has changed towards a lot is hinging on IMMS to gain an
>advantage with several classes.

It still is minimal. It really, really is. Short of empowerment, which again, has been a part of CF for the vast majority of its life, this claim just doesn't hold water. Stop making it.

>When I started I as a newbie could always get things like
>jeweled broadswords (that also was better) because they were
>unlimited.

I'll admit in a heartbeat that learning to dress adequately is difficult for real newbies and its something I'd like to address this year. But if you're the kind of person who had no trouble getting jeweled broadswords and you think gearing a lowbie (or anything for that matter) is difficult today then I'm going to laugh at you.

>I understand that these are design decisions that has been
>made and several are probably really good for your idea of the
>game. But I also feel that the vision of creating a realistic
>fantasy world is not always aligned with those that play the
>game. The community around CF is incredibly limited these days
>and I think creating maps, guides and adding items to item
>databases is vital to retain newbies but the vibe you get from
>IMMS has more or less squashed those attempts so people have
>grown tired of it.
>

I agree with you that our vision doesn't always align with what some of our players might want (or more often than not, think they want). At the same time, part of our job is to make CF appeal to a wider audience than just, for example, players who only care about PK or exploring Hell. Ultimately, that balancing act is on us and I think over the years we've done a poor job with it at times, though not necessarily how you might assume.

As for the community and it creating resources for players, I think that's great. We ask players to make very few concessions with regards to what they publish about CF in the grand scheme of things, and I think for the most part the Diku wiki, for example, is a fantastic (if often outdated or inaccurate) resource that, for the time being, we can't hold a candle to. I'm glad all of the players who've contributed to it did so, and I'm also happy to see that 99.9% of the time the player base respects the wishes of the staff with regards to the contents of the wiki and other such endeavors.

>Be all this as it may, you're still describing a CF from a
>long time ago that hasn't reflected our vision of the game for
>the better part of two decades.
>
>Honestly, if you think that CF was 'better' when you could buy
>150 puppies to wail on you in Galadon then I'm sorry but I
>just don't think we're going to see eye to eye on much.

Certain parts of CF was better. It was much less of an investment to create and play a character. There was much less things I felt I had to do and the things I had to do was done much quicker.

If I want to play a giant axe spec and just rank to 40+ naturally then I won't have fun because my class and skills are balanced around having them at 100% or near 100%.

It reminds me when WoW was launched and they had removed the XP penalty for dying that is standard for these games. It was mocked for being casual or silly. But in hindsight I feel that it was 100% the correct decision. You are stilled annoyed when you are dying and leveling takes enough time so you don't need extra penalty.

Do people really get MORE invested in characters if they are forced to spam prac or wait for some hundred hours to let it increase naturally? Do we have less throw away chars now than before?

>>When I started there were not as many secrets and it was
>>pretty ok to do a map of something like Elven Vaults even if
>>it was an area explore. These days more and more powerful
>>things come from area explore / quests and they are seen as
>>incredibly secret so it is almost impossible to actually
>learn
>>what advantages the "in crowd" (IMMS and certain players)
>>has.
>
>Again, you have to go back a lot of years to get to a time
>when publicly discussing or sharing info about explore areas
>and such was cool, if it ever was (before my time).

I think one guy even got a title Cartographer of Hell or something like that? These days people in a goodie cabal don't want to tell the entrance to Silent Tower to a cabal mate because they are afraid it will change if it spreads too much and then they will lose their advantage.

>It still is minimal. It really, really is. Short of
>empowerment, which again, has been a part of CF for the vast
>majority of its life, this claim just doesn't hold water.
>Stop making it.

Now the rewards are scaled back again but you still have things like IMM XP being a requirement for certain areas with insanely powerful items and buffs. You still have things like instead of empowerment you have partial empowerments and virtues/shaman paths.


>>When I started I as a newbie could always get things like
>>jeweled broadswords (that also was better) because they were
>>unlimited.
>
>I'll admit in a heartbeat that learning to dress adequately is
>difficult for real newbies and its something I'd like to
>address this year. But if you're the kind of person who had
>no trouble getting jeweled broadswords and you think gearing a
>lowbie (or anything for that matter) is difficult today then
>I'm going to laugh at you.

If I died as an arial warrior at level 30 I could get two unlimited jeweled broadswords (before the weight increase). It is of course possible that you have added stuff the last years that can compete with this but even if you have then relative power of two jeweled broadswords are no longer as good as it was back then.

And I think it is great that you are improving the eq but hopefully you don't fall into the trap to add a lot of worthless stats. Because it does not matter if that newbie has 12% fire resist, 4% slash resist and save vs mental when he has 13 damroll on his warrior and fights a veteran that uses the same eq as always and has 40 dam.


>I agree with you that our vision doesn't always align with
>what some of our players might want (or more often than not,
>think they want). At the same time, part of our job is to
>make CF appeal to a wider audience than just, for example,
>players who only care about PK or exploring Hell. Ultimately,
>that balancing act is on us and I think over the years we've
>done a poor job with it at times, though not necessarily how
>you might assume.
>
>As for the community and it creating resources for players, I
>think that's great. We ask players to make very few
>concessions with regards to what they publish about CF in the
>grand scheme of things, and I think for the most part the Diku
>wiki, for example, is a fantastic (if often outdated or
>inaccurate) resource that, for the time being, we can't hold a
>candle to. I'm glad all of the players who've contributed to
>it did so, and I'm also happy to see that 99.9% of the time
>the player base respects the wishes of the staff with regards
>to the contents of the wiki and other such endeavors.

But they are becoming more and more pointless as more and more high end gear and areas are seen as area explore. I don't see any reason at all for example to keep the dragon lairs secret. Or why ruined dragon tower is seen as a secret but the palace in Seantryn is not.

Can still be done in an hour, you just have to get level 15 first. The techniques to do so are public knowledge.

If I'm in a group of two, assuming my groupmate is doing as much damage as me, I need not a 25% bonus, but a 100% bonus to skill learns in order to have my skills keep up with my level in the same way as if I was soloing. Likewise a group of three would need a 200% bonus. His numbers - 25%, 50%, aren't at all absurd, And even if they were there, I would still more often than not insist on soloing to around level 30 on any character that could (that or make a point of bitch ranking weak characters like necros, conjis or invokers spamming grease).

As for the flat bonus. Why not? Everyone suggests it takes too long to spam, one thing that comes up again and again is that people don't have time to play. The rate of skill learning is arbitrary in the first place, why not make it arbitrarily shorter? The 25% bonus was nice but it wasn't a different world. And that people will want it even shorter isn't an argument against that. Do I spend a total of 60 hours spamming with this character, or only 50? It's still way more than 5. You know?

Over the course of the game, practicing skills has become slightly more difficult as some of the cheaper ways have been removed. No boxing gloves, 15 for defenses, word of recall spamming, etc. These are probably have an overall negligible affect.

One thing that has definitely happened, though, is skill bloat. I mean Orcs have like 95 skills. Armor use, Elbow, Knee, Kick, Additional Invoker paths (wasn't ooze added at some point?), additional Healer sups, neo-shamans, neo-rangers, neo-thieves, and so on generally lead to characters having more and more skills, spells, and sups (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) but does mean that as a player you now have 10 skills you want to perfect (or many many more) instead of just crushing hand and hold person.

Just a thought.

Observation skill learning something I always wanted since the weapon version went in. As for the bonus to grouping, I just spammed a ton of skills/spells on the 25% bonus week and it didn't feel like a big improvement. #### still took hours in some cases. Even getting staff up with a practice staff fighting mobs holding staffs took a long time, though I really enjoyed that it was a bit faster than those without! I really don't even want to consider playing a giant again since it is just pure misery. Low number of pracs, 3-4 pracs to get skill up enough to use, then hours and hours to master one skill. Just no fun. I think int affects enough other things now, even warriors have legacies that make use of it, that we could make learning rates the same for all races. Just my opinion. High int, high dex have advantages to high con/highstr races now overall. No reason to make the str based races gain so slow still.

As for wands, I didn't even realize it was changed to this new new system because I just kept hearing people in CB complain about this lair or that lair. I still think the big outliers are a bit much. Gaplemos suggestion of being able to bribe the guildmaster for a new location seems pretty cool.

The rest it looks like you are pretty set on so I'll leave it be.

My current had only been able to gather 2, maybe 3, at most 4 sleek blacks over a few hundred hours. I have relied on buying from other chars, taking in pk, and using limited wands.

I haven't complained because I've been able to secure 2 limited locations. That's only possible with long log ins. And when I die in pk, it's often no barrier for me any time soon. I actually wish is taken the no sleek edge as in practice the black is too hard to get most of the time (even using barrier!) and I am worried that the same will happen if I lose control of my aura location.

Those all seem like excellent changes. I'd like to also see the gear gap decreased and the quantity of stackable preps reduced (like you can't fly if you have a shield potion up or whatever).

There's no question those things you have listed though are a step in the right direction - Torak and you are both right that the edge points and prep systems really made you want to be OCD about doing all that nonsense and it was more time consuming than fun. The grind in CF is still way higher than I like because you can't keep the character forever.

I'd love to see you guys continue to keep pushing the envelope towards less tedium.

Maybe keep the edge system the way it is now but give everyone a few edge points every 5 or 10 levels?

That arguably shrinks the difference btwn haves and have nots but also allows people to try out a wide range of edges with a char (which I think is seen to be fun by most?).

That addresses the power imbalance while retaining the ability to customise and experiment to a high degree, and not weep if you just picked an edge that sounded great but was in fact pretty mediocre.

Regarding edge points - I think Umiron wanted explore/observe to matter less when it comes to getting edges. He accomplished that by reducing the contribution of explore/observe, as well as the maximum provided by explore/observe.

I suggest something else - a mean-preserving squeeze of the edge point distribution. So that top-tier explorers get more than the average, but not as much more than they used to. And bad explorers get less than the average, but not as much less than they used to.

Instead of simply halving everyone's edge points from those two sources, make it so that everyone still gets the same, on average, with the winners getting less and the losers getting more.


Regarding exploration - I think looking at everything in a room description is quite tedious. Each area should have perhaps at most 5-10 major points, and ideally we want a system where the moment you visit the room, you get it. No "look at this king", "look at his throne". Just walk into the room with the king, and the points come.

Repetition could also be removed in the case of areas which have a "culminating point". Something which obviously needs a very thorough knowledge of that area should grant all the explore/observe points of that area. An example might be Kteng's. I'm not sure this can be easily achieved without altering areas, so this is probably not a very useful suggestion.


Regarding skill spam - I think the grouping thing can still be gamed by veterans to some degree. It might be difficult to implement a working system. But the PK Death / PK Win method sounds good. The reason it is good is because it encourages more PKing. PK is the lifeblood of Carrion Fields. I know it's by far the primary reason I play. It would be really boring to role-play a bad-ass who couldn't kill someone talking smack to him.

It also comforts the losers, and reduces the impetus to rage-delete. And it can't be abused, because losing CON is really not worth a few skill ups. I certainly would rather keep my CON than to die on purpose to get a few skill-ups. In fact a player would always want to win his PK instead, since then he gets skill-ups too, but without paying CON.


Levelling - one reason to sit at certain ranks, is that some skills are easier to practise at low ranks. For example defences - at level 15 if I know where to spam, I can get 100%s in block, parry, dodge quite quickly. But this method is no longer available if I get higher in levels, because then it becomes dangerous to spam.

I'm not sure what we can do to make group-levelling more attractive. To some degree I think players who are clever enough to figure out some mechanically-efficient way to spam their skills should be rewarded for their insight. And we don't want to devalue high-int races, one of whose benefits is faster learning.

Perhaps one thing we could do is to allow all classes to solo-rank without too much difficulty. Good mercenaries who can tank well might go a long way towards this - just make this mercenaries take less damage from non-PCs, and more from PCs, so they are balanced for PK.

I'll start this off by agreeing with most of what you said, and your analytical abilities towards CF are really good from what you've posted in the past.

Yes, looking through room & desc items for the nth time is tedious. I like your idea of culminating points.
*I would love more area quests, some easily found others less so, but all trigger on room entry or looking at something fairly obvious, that gave the points instead. Create 90 edge point rewarding specific quests (or however many areas there are). Each char on generation gets 30 or something, some in low level areas, others in high. Make them all completable at any level range, but not available until a min level. Scale edge point rewards for completion accordingly.

Yes, people hate skill spam, and increased learning is not a bad thing, though it does lessen the perk of high int some. PVP learn rates would just be farmed by training. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

Yes, solo ranking should be more viable, but grouping should be incentivized as well. Learn rate boosts tied to morale might be interesting, as generally grouping increases morale.

PK Loss rewards aren't a bad idea, I do think giving anything to winners is negative reinforcement that might spawn douche behavior (twist posting the edge table already did this). But the loser, sure, give him a little bump. People aren't going to trade con for skill gains. People will sure as hell will multi-kill newbies for them though.

I would love to see NPCs that gave no PK benefit, but were useful in ranking. Hell, beef up all mercs, but get rid of them for PK.

But look at they why we want these things. If PK is the lifeblood, then all these things are wanted only in relation to PK. You want them to that you can go engage in PK at the highest level, without feeling you have this disadvantage, because clearly all people spend their time min/maxing, so you have to as well. It becomes a CF arms race.

The perception is always everyone else does it, so I do to, in order to be competitive. And there is the main disconnect. I genuinely don't think anyone but the true PKers care as much about these things. So unless you are competitive with the top 1%, say the Twists and the Daevs (both of which have had non-amazing PK chars I'm sure but get remembered most for the beasts they did play), you're not competitive?

Let's be honest. Tac, you, Torak. Each of you, if my memory is right, is probably one of the best PKers in CF, hands down. I probably have PK'd maybe one of you ever with one of my chars in 5 years, and been killed countless times by all of you. All of you can already tear up most people that talk smack to you (if they are in PK range). Most of you are the people the majority of the Mud is actually not competitive against.

You all have played the game a long time, know more than most of us ever will, and can steam roll 90% of the mud with a stock no edged character, because you just have greater ability and knowledge at playing this game. You have a greater focus on the PK aspect than a lot of us, and that comes across in fights and the success you all have in it.

You (meaning highly skilled Pkers) don't need 100%s across the board on your skill page.
You don't need 20 edges.
You don't need ABS, stoneskin, fly, enlarge, reduce and a host of other preps.
Tactics and competency will win out in the long term, and all of you know it.
It's the people who suck at PK that need those things against your characters, not to win, but to be competitive, because we just don't have that level of ability. On an equal field, you guys win the fight. But you don't really want competitive. Competitive is balance. It's a pretty even match of you winning or losing. None of you guys want that. You want to be able to win. Not against some, not against most, but against all. You want to role play the bad asses that can kill any who dare cross them, and then back it up. Don't we all.

Is Krunk (I think that was Tac's- and I use him as he's my only real recent memory of a CF badass char) racking up close to 400 pks considered competitive? Or is he a broken char compared to 90% of the mud because the guy playing him is extremely skilled in both PK and char development, and so got so much out of him that most players, even vets, couldn't keep up with him?

Some players don't want to put in the work to get to the same ceiling they had before, and the available time to play argument is a very valid one that I won't dispute. But if you don't enjoy CF, the entirety of CF, that's on the player. The staff can't simply keep making CF easier and easier. What is it about a text based game that kept people playing for decades? It's not just more free time back then. I played Halo 2 online for months. And then, I just stopped. Eventually, matchmaking is just dull. There's no investment in the game, and there's not really any sense of achievement of fulfillment after a match ends.

So there has to be a point where you've watered down CF to a point where it's not an immersive RP/PK game, it's just a FPS in text. The whole point of CF, as I always saw it, was to encourage players to invest at least something in their char. The time sinks, while maybe too long currently, have to exist, in order to foster a player's connection to a character. When players don't have to invest in a char, the game suffers as a whole. If I'm planning on playing a 500 hour character, who cares if I don't hero and master my non essentual skills til 100 hours? And if I am in my 400th hour, why should a guy in his 20th actually be entirely competitive with me anyway?

But if you're planning on playing 50 hour chars, then yeah, you're screwed. Why is that a bad thing though? Shouldn't we encourage the sticking to a char more then the die, delete, reroll. Or even worse, Die, rage, reroll char to specifically grief guy that made you rage?

The barriers to entry in terms of time commitments are high, maybe too high, even for vets. But, I still think there needs to be at least something in that vein for the game to remain fun.

Damn, I ramble way too much in these posts.

"You all have played the game a long time, know more than most of us ever will, and can steam roll 90% of the mud with a stock no edged character, because you just have greater ability and knowledge at playing this game. You have a greater focus on the PK aspect than a lot of us, and that comes across in fights and the success you all have in it."

I wouldn't classify myself as that good, but I will say that most of the time I'm not really competing against the 90%. One of the reasons Krunk was so successful was that I had the tools to compete against anyone in my PK range. I never ran up against a character and said... Damn, my build just can't take that build. This honestly causes a number of my deletions.

"The whole point of CF, as I always saw it, was to encourage players to invest at least something in their char. The time sinks, while maybe too long currently, have to exist, in order to foster a player's connection to a character."

I simply don't believe this to be true.

If anything, the time sinks have the opposite effect for me. I usually start a character very into it, but get bogged down in the time sinks and give up. Alternatively, something like Krunk that basically starts as a throw-away lowbie pkers can grow into something more because I don't get bogged in time sinks. That can be a matter of luck (finding groups, etc) as much as my own volition though. It also means something like waiting for empowerment can completely kill a character I'm very into.

"If I'm planning on playing a 500 hour character, who cares if I don't hero and master my non essentual skills til 100 hours?"

Do you seriously *plan* to play 500 hour characters? Because, I can't even imagine doing that. I usually start with something I want to play. An edge I want to try, or build I want to try out and go from there. The very idea of planning something to play for 500 hours sounds terrible. I'm not trying to be an ass or anything. I just really can't fathom this.

"But if you're planning on playing 50 hour chars, then yeah, you're screwed. Why is that a bad thing though?"

Because if I ever came across a game that required me to plan out the next 500 hours and that was a planned investment, I'd walk away. I can't say for certain, but I doubt I'm in the minority there. If I can't have fun in 50 hours: A real life work week+, or approximately length of most modern single player RPG's, why would I invest even more time? Other than people (vets) with thousand's of hours already invested, who would? Even 50 hours is a long long time to give to a game. If we got 50 hours out of every newbie, I'd be ecstatic. I doubt we get 50 minutes.

I admit, I am very likely in the minority here as I don't get bored with my chars as easily, though I still do of course.

I think 500 hours is about right. Not that I have to play that long, but that I get to. If people hate all the grinding so much, sticking to one char eliminates it. I might grind out stuff for the first, let's say 50, hours on every char. Then I get 450 hours of doing whatever I want. So that grinding becomes far less of an overall % of my over all play time.

A guy who deletes at around 100 hours that spends the first 50 hours grinding spends 50% of his time grinding stuff out. In his five 100 hour chars, he spends 250 hours grinding over those same 500 hours where I only spent 50. I get a much larger ROI on the grinding I did, and maybe that is why I don't mind it so much at all, because I end up playing a char that enjoys the fruit of that far longer.

I also really dislike life pre hero. (I like being able to roam most areas freely, not care about xp holes, and tackle tougher things in the game) I made it to 500 hours with my second char. Then had a 450 hour char at the purge. Then 500+, 900+, 900+ were my next three characters. I have yet to ever play any guy feared in PK. I still get amazed by how much better a lot of players are than me, even at bards I consider myself just a little above average. With everything else I'm god awful. Not that this ever ruins my fun playing, since I try to be good at surviving more than winning.

Should anyone have to play 500 hours, of course not. I plan out maybe the first 25 hours of all my characters lives. Then, it's just playing the game. The more I play the char, the more I end up invested in it. I don't think players that play one char for 500 hours are bad for the game. I don't think people who reroll every 100 hours are either. But of the two, who is more likely to rage or delete in frustration? Who is going to be a more well rounded char in total, on average. (some people bring amazing RP with everything they do)

Who's the char you want to interact with? The guy equally focused on grinding, pking for a few hours, then deleting, or the guy who has been around for 100s of hours developing every facet of their char, not just their deadliness.

I might not give other chars a thrilling PK encounter cause I suck, but I might amuse them for 10 minutes interacting after I'm a corpse. (Post PK RP is great) And isn't that better than a guy who rages on you or bitches about some OOC crap?

They aren't going to engage, and even if they did, text forum is about the worst possible communication medium for honest discussion of that sort to happen. I actually had a post in a similar vein mentally prepared (though more focused on game design and goals) but figured, why bother?

The sad part is... I want to play... just not the game that exists right now. I don't have 4 work weeks of my life to throw away doing unfun things so I can have fun. I've got things I can do that are more fun right now.

Unrelated tangent: While I think (of all the things time could be spent on) the berserk change was stupid and a waste of time and a downgrade to an ability that isn't exactly that awesome to begin with, I'll say that at least because the reason for the change was outlined, I felt the discussion was considerably more focused and civil.

Updated my browser a while back so my website block had to be "re-placed" and I just didn't care.

Because every time I get a desire to play, I remember, I can play any number of games that frustrate me less and offer more fun.

Can I have fun on CF? Yes.

Is CF fun better than any other game fun? Yes, oddly enough.

Is the amount CF fun is better than other fun worth all the ####ing #### you have to deal with in order to have fun? No...not even close.

While someone is spamming up skills in CF I can level multiple characters, run dungeons while on voice comms with my friends and do a host of other things simultaneously "for free" and none of it is transient like CF characters are.

And here we have to beg to get skill practice reduced, like it's totally oblivious to everyone why people with jobs can't be bothered with CF anymore. You roll up a char, spend a couple hundred hours getting everything sorted out for the "fun part" then deal with bandwagon #### and mass logging.

Oh - and if you don't do well PK wise, you may as well delete since you'll get screwed on rewards and hated on by the rest of the playerbase and your gear will be 20% as effective as a decent set on people who rarely die.

Oh yeah - and log in every week at least 2 hours or you'll lose your gear and all your preps lol. That's fun, like getting punched in the face kind of fun at least.

It's been a major part of our lives and we don't want to let go of something that we loved. So we keep reaching out, hoping to come to a better understanding much like a failing marriage.