I love aspects of carrionfields, but there are a few things
that really deflate my experience. I deleted my character
(Turpa), but I wanted to atleast tell the imms why, so they
can understand what their players feel.

My list:

Time consumption:
1. Leveling takes almost too much time. Hours stacked on more hours of dry hack n slash for a level is a pain.
2. Getting a group is really hard sometimes. Some days it just doesn't happen. Advancing myself is too difficult, and I feel compelled to level because my character isn't fully developed.
4. Leveling with people always becomes monotonous, dull, and usually involves two people falling half asleep. It doesn't feel like a good place for immteraction.
5. Characters are consumable. I am not a hardcore CFer, and I have a very very hard time putting the kind of time that's needed into a character who will perm die.

Limited Preps:
1. Hard to find basic preperations which are (required) for mage pk.
2. People aren't stupid. When they use a prep which is limited they go right back and get it again. Allows one person to monopolize one prep.
3. People with preps are almost too powerful? People without them are definately pretty weak.
4. Knowledge of preps is OOC knowledge which continues with characters.
5. Prep searching is fun, but also easily turns into a monotonous "area grinding" which isn't fun.

Power Disparity
1. People who grind up their skill %'s up fight much much better. Skill grinding sucks, but it REALLY pays off well if you can hack the boredom.. or know some sweet way of doing it.

Impersonality
1. I think the roleplaying level on CF is superb. The atmosphere is great. What it is lacking, though, is the aloof and relaxed atmosphere of many muds have. I log onto CF for the challenge and mystery. I log onto another mud to relax and hang with my buddies.

IN conclusion. It's the boring stuff which yields the best stuff on CF. This is a problem which plagues any RPG. But on CF it's an issue worth mentioning (for me).

>I love aspects of carrionfields, but there are a few things
>that really deflate my experience. I deleted my character
>(Turpa), but I wanted to atleast tell the imms why, so they
>can understand what their players feel.
>
>My list:
>
>Time consumption:
>1. Leveling takes almost too much time. Hours stacked on
>more hours of dry hack n slash for a level is a pain.
>2. Getting a group is really hard sometimes. Some days it
>just doesn't happen. Advancing myself is too difficult, and I
>feel compelled to level because my character isn't fully
>developed.
>4. Leveling with people always becomes monotonous, dull, and
>usually involves two people falling half asleep. It doesn't
>feel like a good place for immteraction.
- Agreed 100% on all above points

>5. Characters are consumable. I am not a hardcore CFer, and
>I have a very very hard time putting the kind of time that's
>needed into a character who will perm die.

- Sorry, I disagree. It's needed to give it a reality and make new characters.

>
>Limited Preps:
>1. Hard to find basic preperations which are (required) for
>mage pk.
>2. People aren't stupid. When they use a prep which is
>limited they go right back and get it again. Allows one
>person to monopolize one prep.
>3. People with preps are almost too powerful? People without
>them are definately pretty weak.
>4. Knowledge of preps is OOC knowledge which continues with
>characters.
>5. Prep searching is fun, but also easily turns into a
>monotonous "area grinding" which isn't fun.

- Agree 100%

>
>Power Disparity
>1. People who grind up their skill %'s up fight much much
>better. Skill grinding sucks, but it REALLY pays off well if
>you can hack the boredom.. or know some sweet way of doing
>it.

- Disagree and this has been proven wrong.

>
>Impersonality
>1. I think the roleplaying level on CF is superb. The
>atmosphere is great. What it is lacking, though, is the aloof
>and relaxed atmosphere of many muds have. I log onto CF for
>the challenge and mystery. I log onto another mud to relax
>and hang with my buddies.
>

- Once again, agree 100%

Oddly enough, I've played this game for a year and a bit and I still see the same problems I did when I first started. I also believe the lack of users on at a given time reflects this and I hope the imm's can ease the levelling burden just a bit - it would surely help the MUD.

Nice work puting a well thought out statement through.

- Jaynus

Isildur and Nivek covered most of the specific points I would have made, and I'd like to echo their thanks for voicing your opinions in a useful and constructive way.

A couple of more general points:

1) Leveling serves as a filter. In order to earn the hero rank and all the spiffiest abilities, you have to undergo the trials involved in earning the experience. It also allows a certain degree of difficulty correction- as you get better at the game and more easily reach the higher ranks, you become surrounded by more competent and experienced players, which helps the competitive side of the game (including, but not limited to, PK) keep up with your increasing skill. It is not a perfect filter (some people hero largely because other people prop them up), but if it was trivial, it would be simpler to just start everyone at 51 with all the bells and whistles.

1B) The rate of leveling hasn't changed much overall. Some things got tougher, other things got easier (more area choices, alternative XP sources, fewer instant death traps, no "XP holes" for multiple deaths, class "power inflation" (*), etc.). The evidence for this is that people still hero in roughly the amount of time they did when I was starting to play here.

1C) I've repeatedly solicited ideas for ways to earn experience besides killing stuff, and I've implemented or helped implement a number of the ones that don't cause other problems. We've recently upped the power of these alternative sources as we became comfortable with their balance (more commerce XP and faster commerce skills, bonus movement points for exploration, pushing imms towards handing out more subjective XP, etc.), and that's a direction we will continue to move in. If you have ideas along these lines, please submit them. (Hint: Ask yourself if there is an easy way for one person or two collaborators to rack them up unfairly quickly first.)

2) If you think that skill percentages are even in the top five reasons why someone is winning or losing a fight, you are creating phantoms to blame your losses on. They have a small, quantifiable impact on fights which is lost among simpler, more crucial variables like knowing your way around areas in a hurry. The people who are piling up wins tend to have middling skill percentages compared to other characters of their level- ahead of the new-ish players because they take basic steps to be efficient in learning them, but behind most of the more obsessive-compulsive people.

3) Most limited preps are not at their maximum. A few of the very best wands and haste sources are. Almost nothing else. And the system(s) in place absolutely guarantees that any character that needs a wand can acquire one at any moment if they know where to go. And "knowing where to go" usually means "go to places that would obviously have mage-y items of great power".

3B) I'll also volunteer the tidbit that the currently held beliefs on how the wand system(s) works are generally quite wrong, and would lead people into suboptimal behavior. As usual, I recommend observing for yourself instead of mining rumors.

3C) More preps than ever are available by sale/barter. This can effectively turn any valuable enough item into a prep.

4) You mention that characters are consumable. Have you ever played a character to age death or CON death? The numbers indicate that "player didn't want to play this character more" (deletion) is far and away the leading cause of characters being consumed. It takes hundreds of hours and/or scores of deaths for this to happen.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): Power inflation: I'm fairly certain this term was given to me by The Pico, and I don't take credit for its invention. Basically, over time, we make more upgrades to classes and equipment than we make downgrades. If you look at the "equipment freezes" of hero characters now, and put a date on a lot of the items that the top-tier people are clinging to, an awful lot of them are recent additions. Heroes just don't wear red dragonhide like they used to. And while there are literally hundreds of new abilities added in recent times, a much smaller number have been pulled, curtailed, or pushed to higher levels.

His statement about ranking is true. There has been a steady decline in the playerbase over the past few years. During the morning play times there are usually only 10-20 people on, total. It has never been this low, and I always play majority during this time. Harder to rank with the current, need the magic 3, to get bonus' system. Read Dio's board regarding this, there are a lot of old time players making legitimate comments. Its pretty tough right now during certain times of the day for even a highly skilled player to rank at a good pace. Im sure you will come up with some log of times when there are 200 players but for some of us we dont play during them due to location...

Would be cool to have some signifigant bonus for pairs too. Heck, ive seen lots of characters that solo rank to hero..so I know its a possibility..I just cant handle the monotony.

Why is it this way? What balance issue is at solved by forcing people to learn in groups of three? Why not make it easier to solo rank? Seems to me like it would solve a boat-load of issues if solo ranking was easier. Sure, keep the bonus for groups, but maybe not make it such a necessity?

If I could solo rank effectively with any class, I would turn off the tell channel and power to hero. I bet a lot of people would do the same. I don't think the IMMs think that option is condusive to a roleplaying environment.

I wouldn't mind seeing this, but I won't be holding my breath.

This reply has a very limited scope, and is merely intended to be taken as one more opinion among the masses, and not at all to start any sort of argument or whathaveyou.

Okay, first... I agree with the anti-Magic 3 thing. Perhaps code some sort of thing where you get some sort of boost for being one of the select few on. Not a huge one by any means, or maybe not even an automated process... but if the average-to-current-to-maximum player ratio (based on some convoluted formula) is currently non-favorable (ie - one of those 15-20 player times), give a tiny, tiny bonus to solo levelers. At best (again, 15-20 players), it would be noticably less than a 2-person group, but at worst (60-80 players, right now) it would simply be the base amount. Grouping will still always be "better", but at least if you're solo simply because there's nobody on, you'll get some perks for being die-hard :P Oh, and for the record, I'm pretty sure the Magic 3 thing was instituted during a period of heavy player-base to ramp up the effect of socialization (including things such as RP, PK, etc). I don't have any partially erased magnetic tapes to back this up, but I do remember someone making a comment to that effect.

Moving on... well, sure, the rate of leveling hasn't changed much on a 3-vs-3 basis, compared to groups of yore. On the other hand, I remember leveling to 51 in something like 6 hours back in the day, and that without trying. Now? Perhaps the actual act of leveling is no harder, but see the prior point: we don't have the same ability to have the playerbase support things as they were. To this, I don't know if there's an answer, or if there needs to be one. Although, I was darkly amused by the less "instant death traps" comment, as when CF was still young it was a point of advertisement that CF had done away with DTs... I still remember discovering Certain Death and being totally stunned by it. Not that I died, but that it was an actual DT in a game proud of the absence of them.

Quick note: I agree on the percentages. Except for mages who don't know A/B/S locations... for them, perfected spells are a must. At least those that lead directly to survival such as word of recall, teleport, sleep, etc.

Another note: I loathe the idea that preps are necessary. I remember fondly the days when the deathfully difficult path of simply heroing as a mage was enough to earn your kick-ass wings, as it was "trial-by-fire" enough. Now, you have to know more about the descriptions and areas in the MUD than the Immortals do just to survive as a high level mage (perhaps this is mildly sensationalized, perhaps not).

Maybe it's juvenile, but "whatever" is the best I can say here without getting all worked up. I'm sorry, but if I want to play a game where I gather resources then get ganked by some pre-teen horde who has no desire to heighten the enjoyable atmosphere of the game... I'll go play Star/Warcraft. This includes the fact that every character has to be in the buying/selling of information business (if not IC, then OOC) to survive, because if the information is given freely, as would befit a game designed for fun, things get changed to make that information useless. So, like errant children, the playerbase is continually negatively reinforced into the graspy, greedy mindset of holding all information to themselves that they can, for fear of their work "going to waste". I think it's a testament to the staying power of CF that the playerbase puts up with that, as I can't imagine any other game surviving this level of US-government style population control.

I don't have an answer for any of this, so I can't offer anything to "repair" it. Before anyone derides me for that, though, I'm not merely pitching my latest rant; I'm tossing this out there in in the hopes that someone with more creativity than myself sees some exact word combination that I've written, or it gets someone's mental wheels going, and things happen that are good.

Why is it this way? What balance issue is at solved by forcing people to learn in groups of three? Why not make it easier to solo rank?


Sure, warriors with more defensively capable specs/races, assassins, paladins, rangers, and even some thieves could do decently in solo ranking. That leaves eleven classes that would have a significantly harder time doing the same thing. With the emphasis that CF's players have always put on boosting their skills through practice (I'm guilty of this too), I could see a lot of people just saying "to hell with groups, period" if solo ranking or paired ranking were made easier and/or more rewarding. You'd end up with a few guys at hero with superb skills and a whole assload of annoyed lowbies who would never be able to rank. The current system, I think, seems to be an attempt to give everyone a better shot at hooking a group and getting some ranks in. Yeah, I would like to see all classes be able to stand a chance in solo ranking from level 1 all the way to 51, but not only would it be impossible to explain in an IC context, I think it would make the RP of the game suffer. I mean, for all the bitching people make about ranking being stagnant, how much worse do you think it would be if everyone just did it solo? Have you ever worked a graveyard shift at work? I have. You know what happened? I started talking to myself x(. I don't want some character of mine to start talking to himself too. Of course, with as little as I get to play I don't think any of this would really affect me, but hey...it was worth mentioning.

YaY then the bloodthirsty pkers don't have to RP with anyone! Woot quiet mode here we go.

>3) Most limited preps are not at their maximum. A few of the
>very best wands and haste sources are. Almost nothing else.
>And the system(s) in place absolutely guarantees that any
>character that needs a wand can acquire one at any moment if
>they know where to go. And "knowing where to go" usually
>means "go to places that would obviously have mage-y items of
>great power".

I've never come across a barrier rod in it's native location yet have come across some of the most obscure quests in cf?

Out of interest, what function have you got that tells you if things are maxxed out or not?

I've never come across a barrier rod in it's native location yet have come across some of the most obscure quests in cf?

Quests vastly outnumber barrier locations? Hell if I know.

Out of interest, what function have you got that tells you if things are maxxed out or not?

Erm, several, really. Why is it surprising that it's not hard to check that?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>I've never come across a barrier rod in it's native
>location yet have come across some of the most obscure quests
>in cf?
>
>Quests vastly outnumber barrier locations? Hell if I know.
>
>Out of interest, what function have you got that tells you
>if things are maxxed out or not?
>
>Erm, several, really. Why is it surprising that it's not hard
>to check that?
>
>valguarnera@carrionfields.com

It's not, curiousity killed the cat is all.

For what it's worth, here are a few ideas on levelling possibilities I've seen in other MUDs.

1) Hard AI + Strong Risk/Reward System.

This includes mobs that chase after you if you flee, mobs that call guards, mobs with special abilities not available to PCs, and so on. Combine that with strong incentives to tackle more powerful targets, and you get a situation where brain-dead levelling gets you very dead indeed. It's nowhere near as fun as a human opponent, but at least it helps keep people entertained.

2) Strongly Non-linear XP Scale

One MUD I've played had this goal: a newbie should make level 25 within 25 hours; that same newbie should take over 250 hours to make level 50, if ever.

For obvious reasons, that wouldn't make sense for CF. But there's something to be said for giving people access to a good stack of abilities before levelling gets really rough.

I really like the idea of non-linear EXP gains.. For example a regular rate for the newbie ranks- 1 to 10, and an accellerated rate up to 25. Then from there on the ranking returns to normal/becomes more difficult. Players would probably hero in the same amount of time that they do now, however it would decrease the massive headaches many classes have pre-25th rank.

Except those "headaches" are what balance that class' later power. If you let them skip over the hard parts, how do you explain other classes that are powerful at those levels but less so later, losing their good times?

Some barrier locations are obvious, usually the ones that are very very hard to get as certain classes. The other ones aren't necessarily obvious. If there's a surplus of blaringly obvious barrier wands that don't require a voker + healer to get, feel free to correct me, but for the most part when I've explored getting that magical wand has required killing something that would utterly rock me solo.

Then again, maybe I should play a voker or goodie conjie someday :-P.

Then again, barrier isn't necessary for pk in the way shield and aura are. Both of those tend to be a lot easier to get.

>I love aspects of carrionfields, but there are a few things
>that really deflate my experience. I deleted my character
>(Turpa), but I wanted to atleast tell the imms why, so they
>can understand what their players feel.
>
>My list:
>
>Time consumption:
>1. Leveling takes almost too much time. Hours stacked on
>more hours of dry hack n slash for a level is a pain.
>2. Getting a group is really hard sometimes. Some days it
>just doesn't happen. Advancing myself is too difficult, and I
>feel compelled to level because my character isn't fully
>developed.
>4. Leveling with people always becomes monotonous, dull, and
>usually involves two people falling half asleep. It doesn't
>feel like a good place for immteraction.
>5. Characters are consumable. I am not a hardcore CFer, and
>I have a very very hard time putting the kind of time that's
>needed into a character who will perm die.

You're not alone. Unfortunately, there's no better alternative to the system. You don't want 20-hour heroes. However, you don't want 200 hours to get to hero. Levelling is the necessary time you put in to get the goods you want. As tedious and monotonous as it is, the ends justify the means. The IMMs have done a decent job at offering more ways to get experience. My suggestion: When there's no groups to rank with, PK. When there's no one to PK, find something else to do.

>Limited Preps:
>1. Hard to find basic preperations which are (required) for
>mage pk.

Not hard to find. Try turning brief off. Is there a desk in the room description? Examine desk. Examine book. Examine shelf. Examine crack. etc.

>2. People aren't stupid. When they use a prep which is
>limited they go right back and get it again. Allows one
>person to monopolize one prep.

When you see someone use a prep, go back there and get it before they do.

>3. People with preps are almost too powerful? People without
>them are definately pretty weak.

Preps have durations for a reason. Also, if you complain and complain about how hard preps are to get, don't you think they should be powerful once you get your hands on them?

>4. Knowledge of preps is OOC knowledge which continues with
>characters.

So is area knowledge. Do you explore Galadon with each new character?

>5. Prep searching is fun, but also easily turns into a
>monotonous "area grinding" which isn't fun.


See number 3, above.

>
>Power Disparity
>1. People who grind up their skill %'s up fight much much
>better. Skill grinding sucks, but it REALLY pays off well if
>you can hack the boredom.. or know some sweet way of doing
>it.

In a fight between evenly matched players, skill % matters. I don't care if I have all 100s and someone like Abernyte has all 75s, he is still going to win that fight most of the time. Same applies if I'm fighting someone like Graham, only in reverse.

You also have to figure about the class match-up. My thief with 100s down the board is still going to be leery of any axe spec warrior. My paladin with 100s down the board is still going to be leery of a Divine Sect shaman.

>Impersonality
>1. I think the roleplaying level on CF is superb. The
>atmosphere is great. What it is lacking, though, is the aloof
>and relaxed atmosphere of many muds have. I log onto CF for
>the challenge and mystery. I log onto another mud to relax
>and hang with my buddies.

Why would you want CF to be more aloof? I agree with the challenge (not so much the mystery). I also agree with Daurwyn in that there should be no "safe" place in the MUD. I'd go a step further and make PKing in the Inn even easier if I could.

>IN conclusion. It's the boring stuff which yields the best
>stuff on CF. This is a problem which plagues any RPG. But on
>CF it's an issue worth mentioning (for me).


That is an accurate conclusion. You made a very constructive post.

>You're not alone. Unfortunately, there's no better
>alternative to the system. You don't want 20-hour heroes.
>However, you don't want 200 hours to get to hero. Levelling
>is the necessary time you put in to get the goods you want.

Why don't you want 20 hour heros? A fifty hour hero is just an arbitrary number. It doesn't mean anything, it's just the amount of time we've grown accustomed to putting into things. I think the game would be a lot more fun if you could hero up quickly. You could try out all the race/class/cabal combinations you want. You would take real roleplaying risks with characters since if you ended up getting ####ed you wouldn't lose the huge investment. Why do you think you see so many cookie cutter roles, because if you go out of your way to do something wacky, while you might get rewarded for it, you might also invest a lot of time and come up with nada. This is obviously just a matter of opinion, but I think the assumption that you don't want 20 hour heros is just silly.


>As tedious and monotonous as it is, the ends justify the
>means. The IMMs have done a decent job at offering more ways
>to get experience. My suggestion: When there's no groups to
>rank with, PK. When there's no one to PK, find something else
>to do.

I think it might be time to relax the three to a group requirement. I you can go it alone or get two people together why not get the same bonus? If you get a second or third person it just adds to the damage output and makes it easier which is a bonus by itself. I think you might be playing at the times where there are a lot of players on. It's not uncommon to have twenty people TOTAL on the mud if you play at certain times. This is a real problem for people. And if I play at the same time of day every day, then your suggestion doesn't do jack to help me.

not easier. IMO, warriors and classes that can for the most part already solo rank will do so in even greater numbers. Even if you got the same experience solo as a group of three, that doesn't mean that a shifter with their first form is going to have an easy go of things. If anything, if you want to make ranking a mage easier, you should increase the group of three bonus, perhaps coupled with substantially increased learning rates so that travelling in a group of three is just as beneficial to melee types with skill improvements.

>>You're not alone. Unfortunately, there's no better
>>alternative to the system. You don't want 20-hour heroes.
>>However, you don't want 200 hours to get to hero. Levelling
>>is the necessary time you put in to get the goods you want.
>
>Why don't you want 20 hour heros? A fifty hour hero is just an
>arbitrary number. It doesn't mean anything, it's just the
>amount of time we've grown accustomed to putting into things.
>I think the game would be a lot more fun if you could hero up
>quickly. You could try out all the race/class/cabal
>combinations you want. You would take real roleplaying risks
>with characters since if you ended up getting ####ed you
>wouldn't lose the huge investment. Why do you think you see so
>many cookie cutter roles, because if you go out of your way to
>do something wacky, while you might get rewarded for it, you
>might also invest a lot of time and come up with nada. This is
>obviously just a matter of opinion, but I think the assumption
>that you don't want 20 hour heros is just silly.

I don't want them because then heroes will be a dime a dozen. Tonight, I could roll up a duergar axe spec and have him hero'ed by the weekend. No role. No fleshed-out character. Just a notell killing machine that deletes at the first death and starts over. You might not do that, but there are many that would. Plus you would have *no* lower ranks. None. You'd see 10 newbs, 10 mid-range and 40 heroes on at peak. I think heroes should be worth something.

>
>>As tedious and monotonous as it is, the ends justify the
>>means. The IMMs have done a decent job at offering more
>ways
>>to get experience. My suggestion: When there's no groups to
>>rank with, PK. When there's no one to PK, find something
>else
>>to do.
>
>I think it might be time to relax the three to a group
>requirement. I you can go it alone or get two people together
>why not get the same bonus? If you get a second or third
>person it just adds to the damage output and makes it easier
>which is a bonus by itself. I think you might be playing at
>the times where there are a lot of players on. It's not
>uncommon to have twenty people TOTAL on the mud if you play at
>certain times. This is a real problem for people. And if I
>play at the same time of day every day, then your suggestion
>doesn't do jack to help me.
>

Let's face it. A shifter is not going to solo rank as well as a warrior. If all the warriors solo rank, who's going to help the shifter? Who's going to even talk to the shifter?

I'm not trying to be the bad guy here. Just this year, I posted the reason it takes me 300 hours to hero. You can even search for it. I think the system could be tweaked a bit, yes, but I unfortunately do not think the system you are proposing is a good way of fixing it.

>I love aspects of carrionfields, but there are a few things
>that really deflate my experience. I deleted my character
>(Turpa), but I wanted to atleast tell the imms why, so they
>can understand what their players feel.

I'm not an imm, but I'd like to thank you for offering constructive criticism in a polite and succinct way.


>1. Leveling takes almost too much time. Hours stacked on
>more hours of dry hack n slash for a level is a pain.

Agree and disagree. Based on some of the things you mention below, it sounds like you were playing a mage. Some mages can be a pain to rank. This isn't as true for other classes, who are both more sought after by groups and more able to solo rank. I'm not sure it would be possible to "fix" things so that every class finds it equally easy to advance in rank, or even if that would be desirable. If slow ranking turns you off, maybe limit yourself to combos for which ranking is fairly easy? I'd say paladin, warrior, transmuter, healer, bard, assassin, ranger.


>2. Getting a group is really hard sometimes. Some days it
>just doesn't happen. Advancing myself is too difficult, and I
>feel compelled to level because my character isn't fully
>developed.

Agree. This has always been the case, though. Sometimes you just can't assemble a group. Those are the times you do other stuff. Explore, gather coin, gather preps, work on skills, go look for gear that might be in, etc. Or just log off and hope things are better next time you log in.


>4. Leveling with people always becomes monotonous, dull, and
>usually involves two people falling half asleep. It doesn't
>feel like a good place for immteraction.

Agree. You can always make an effort to RP with your groupmates, but it won't always be reciprocated. One thing to keep you awake, by the way, would be to work on skills while ranking. It also lessens the need for skill grinding outside normal ranking. Unfortunately, I don't see many avenues for making ranking more "interesting".


>5. Characters are consumable. I am not a hardcore CFer, and
>I have a very very hard time putting the kind of time that's
>needed into a character who will perm die.

Disagree. I mean, obviously they're consumable, but the lifespan is so long that age death is fairly rare. You get approx. 550-650 hours depending on race. That's two hours a day for an entire year. I don't know about you, but I'm usually read to move on to something else after playing a character for that long.


>1. Hard to find basic preperations which are (required) for
>mage pk.

Agree and disagree. It's a pain, yes, but possibly not as hard as you make it out to be. Social engineering can often be a more time-efficient way to find preps than actually going out and looking for them. The downside to it being that whatever locations you find out about are already known by someone else. With my last mage I found shield and aura very easy to come by while barrier was incredibly difficult. That's just one guy's experience.


>2. People aren't stupid. When they use a prep which is
>limited they go right back and get it again. Allows one
>person to monopolize one prep.

Agree. It also means they have to hang around that wand location waiting for it to come back. If you know what wands someone uses, you could use that to your advantage. Also, this could be a facet of Carrion Field's "limited items" feature. Like gear, you have to kill someone to acquire wands. (Easier said than done, I know).


>3. People with preps are almost too powerful? People without
>them are definately pretty weak.

Agree and disagree. Most mages with full wands are extremely powerful, yes, but I'm not sure I'm willing to say "too powerful". Mages without them will have a hard time against many classes, but they're not completely powerless. A necro can probably get sleep attempts on any non-rager warrior, at hero, without fear of dying as long as he uses certain non-wand preps. (Protection vs. good, stoneskin, enlarge, reduce, fly, etc.) That's just one example.


>4. Knowledge of preps is OOC knowledge which continues with
>characters.

Agree. But is that a problem? In any case, I can't see a way to avoid it.


>5. Prep searching is fun, but also easily turns into a
>monotonous "area grinding" which isn't fun.

Agree. Like before, can't see a way around it other than getting rid of preps entirely.


>1. People who grind up their skill %'s up fight much much
>better. Skill grinding sucks, but it REALLY pays off well if
>you can hack the boredom.. or know some sweet way of doing
>it.

Agree and disagree. Obviously having better skill percentages helps one fight better. The thing is, most of those combat skills will go up on their own as you rank and as the character ages. At that point you're on the same footing as the guy who spent hours skill grinding. Note: some skills won't go up "on their own" and will require practicing. This sucks, but short of a massive change to the way skills are learned I don't see it changing.


>1. I think the roleplaying level on CF is superb. The
>atmosphere is great. What it is lacking, though, is the aloof
>and relaxed atmosphere of many muds have. I log onto CF for
>the challenge and mystery. I log onto another mud to relax
>and hang with my buddies.

Agree. It's just the nature of Carrion Fields, where you can be killed anywhere at any time. A place that was completely safe, where you can relax and hang out, wouldn't really fit in with the overall tone of the game. The Inn is about the closest thing we have.

>
>IN conclusion. It's the boring stuff which yields the best
>stuff on CF. This is a problem which plagues any RPG. But on
>CF it's an issue worth mentioning (for me).

>>1. I think the roleplaying level on CF is superb. The
>>atmosphere is great. What it is lacking, though, is the aloof
>>and relaxed atmosphere of many muds have. I log onto CF for
>>the challenge and mystery. I log onto another mud to relax
>>and hang with my buddies.

>Agree. It's just the nature of Carrion Fields, where you can be >killed anywhere at any time. A place that was completely safe, where >you can relax and hang out, wouldn't really fit in with the overall >tone of the game. The Inn is about the closest thing we have.

I agree with this and further add (alot to) that, in a game like this, the ability to seek out and total your foe regardless of experience level is vital to keep the game moving. There are people, both of the huggly-giggly type and the asshole with issues type, that don't really need an utter no-PK zone to hide in and stick their tongue out at(or ignore) more predatorial players, outside of when an Imm is present. Even then, it's the imm's job to determine proper IC punishment for interfering with their followers in their presence *and only in their IC presence, not anywhere else, regardless of how visible they are*. There is no OOC punishment for ####ing with a player in any fashion but powergaming or OOC means. No matter how pissed I get when someone PK's me, I know that I either have the choice to put in the hours upon hours of work to get skilled enough to make their lives utterly miserable, no matter how impossible that may seem, trust me, there are always ways unless said character has paralyzed the entire playerbase in fear or has earned imm status. Or I can just drop it and forget the whole thing and not give my opponent(s) another chance to kill and take that next 1/3 of CON away from me because I didn't go gunning for him over a piece of gear or what I am pissed over because I believe they have a crappy RP excuse for getting bored and catching me with my pants down. Either is possible and both offer their own avenues of entertainment levels provided you're a) open to the possibilities and setbacks of each and b) ALWAYS LEARNING ABOUT THE GAME. No matter how little of a knowledge sponge you are.

And believe me, whether the player is more skilled than you or not, sometimes depending on class matchups, it's sometimes better just not to throw away the CON and either rank out of his range or stick around friends you should have been making, who match up ridiculously overpowered against them. That's an overall good aspect of the game, no matter how big of a panicing Inn-sitter you are or how much of an elite, paranoid CON obsessed veteran you are. It's just simply not designed with the *right* in mind for you to grab a couple OOC buddies and party on no matter how many people you show it to.

Stop power ranking and gather some preps...