I've returned to CF after a long hiatus. The game's lack of a playerbase kills most of the fun. Dealing with being a newbie again, I've identified some ingrained attitudes in CF that I believe have contributed to the decline in players.

First, a rigid insistence on ever more serious RP. CF was never a hardcore RP mud at heart; the RP requirement served only to keep out OOC chatter and immersion-breaking play. But those who gained power in the game put a premium on RP and developed the game to that end. In-game power became dependent on impressing an imm with your RP. This brings in a host of other problems. Rewards come according to subjective imm attitudes. It requires much more play time to find and interact with imms sufficiently. RP itself becomes narrowed to match individual imms' tastes and to be noticeable in the "right" way.

1st Radical proposal: End empowerment, nerf the classes if necessary. Make cabals almost entirely player-run and view them more as a standard facet of the game for all players than imm-granted privilege. This would radically encourage the desired RP by opening up those classes best suited to it, the religious classes. The cabal change would slot new players into communities without undue hoop jumping, enhancing the social aspect of the game--which is the most addictive aspect.

Second, a devastating premium on "knowledge," particularly of consumable magic items and limited items. The existing imms and senior players prize their own hard earned knowledge to a degree that they will almost certainly kill the game even for themselves. This has always been sort of a problem, but at this point the loop has closed, even most senior players have left, and new players are at such a severe disadvantage that the game is simply too hard to break into.

2nd Radical proposal: Make ALL item locations freely available and searchable. Consider including some detail of the specific mob or location where appropriate, e.g., level of mob holding the item. This would radically incentivize exploration, risk-taking, and combat. It would level the playing field. It would encourage the removal or extreme limiting of uber-powerful items that detract more than they add by the need for secrecy. "Skill" would come in the use of game knowledge, not the hoarding of it.

Third, mechanics changes that disproportionately burden newbies. It is mind boggling that the admins implemented economics changes (expensive food, preps, etc.) that far disproportionately affect new players and make basic survival a constant drag.

3rd Radical proposal: Every mechanics change should have, as a policy goal, the protection and encouragement of new players, not the opposite. High-level and experienced play can be enhanced other ways without the cost.

All of these changes might at one point have made the game less attractive to some, but at this point, who is left to care? The game itself is on the verge of disappearing. Nobody will have any fun RPing their powerful character if there's nobody to watch.

"I've returned to CF after a long hiatus. The game's lack of a playerbase kills most of the fun"

>I left CF for a while and now I am complaining that there are no players. Why can't people hang around so that I can opt in and opt out at my leisure?

C'mon man, surely you can see that this line of reasoning is a little problematic?

No one expects you to play this game if you don't want to, but eh. If every person that complained about low numbers spent an hour a week playing, CF would have 20 more players on average in any given session.

With respect to props 1-3: you are talking about a completely different game. It's not that the staff disagree with what you're saying- it's that these sorts of changes can't spring up out of nowhere by snapping fingers. This sort of major overhaul would probably take 2-5 years with a fully staffed team of coders. You're talking about overhauling about 15 years of code additions and so on. The scope of the work for these suggestions is huge.

Without trying to be snarky, I doubt anyone with the ability to do this sort of thing would be happy to take their life savings to Bangladesh (where you can live for a dollar a day) and live as a lonely singleton to recode the MUD for the next 10 years on a whim.

It's important to understand that some factors (such as the general state of the economy, responsibilities that come with aging etc.) are present across the entire MUD including the staff, not just the players. The staff are just a pool of volunteers which are drawn from the playerbase ultimately; and as such if player hour numbers are declining it's likely to expect Imm hour numbers to decline too.

PS: And that's IF you can get players and staff to generally agree on suitable changes- which you can see from the responses below is a bit more complicated than it seems.

(Having said that, please feel free to discuss and criticize, because this stuff because good ideas do pop up out of these sorts of debates. Feedback IS important; please don't assume it isn't read or taken on board.)

Our experiences are much different. I haven't played in awhile because of the lack of RP.

Everytime I do get the itch and start researching a character to play I read these boards (like now) but I tend to get discouraged enough to scrap my idea for various reasons.

I no longer have a home office, so no more desk and comfy chair. Instead I have to setup a laptop and USB keyboard on the dining room table and sit in an uncomfortable wooden chair. This is not conducive to long logins. If you would like to start a gofundme to put an addition on my house, buy me a desk and a comfy chair, I will start playing again.

Thank you for your time

The response to my post is not encouraging. Three distinct proposals were derailed into a banal, stupid, old discussion of game balance/difficulty. This is unhelpful to the problem of a lack of playerbase. None of my critics tries to explain why new players are not staying. My proposals could be summed as "redistributing power from the old to the new." Privileges would be universalized and democratized, hoarded knowledge made public, all in the interest of lowering barriers to entry before there's nobody left to play with.

But the same ####ing tune. The elites fiddle: "your solution is my sacred privilege." And so they'll brace against change until we're down to 15 at peak times, then 10, then 5, just as it's gone from 60 to 25 in the past couple years.

MUDs as a whole are not dead, many are not dying, and I like to think that the more successful ones are still #### compared to what CF was and could be.

http://mudstats.com/Browse

Your proposals would turn CF into something it's not. I know it must be difficult to have people disagree with you, since you're clearly right all the time, but we do.

nt

And since I don't play any more, I'm hardly guarding knowledge for my own benefit.

One of the reasons new players didn't stay was because pk edge points got them stomped so often, and discouraged grouping.

Others do stay.

In my opinion playerbase behaviour (engineering advantages using selective log ins, gearing with ooc buddies etc) is also a problem because it means some chars are making it still easier for themselves to stomp newbs whilst ensuring that a newb will never get to be part of a gank that kills them.

I don't feel like edge points were the main contributor to newbies getting stomped. Newbies have always gotten stomped. Only now days you can't stomp newbies by charming them, making them drop all their stuff, making them attack a powerful mob, then lagging them out. Or insta-killing them with dual-backstab. Or freezing them for multiple game hours with hold person. Etc.

If "dying too often" is truly what's making it difficult to retain new players, what about removing the constitution penalty on death? They're going to die a lot regardless; at least make it sting a little less. It's not like there isn't still a deterrent: all your gear, gold and preps are potentially forfeit when you die.

It's frustration that drives them off, not condeath.

I've introduced more than 20 people to CF over the past 3 years, 8 of those during the last, all of these people were experienced MUD players. I did my best to help
them out OOCly, outside the game, sharing some of my limited prep locations, gear, quests, tactics/strategies and so on. But that wasn't enough. They still felt (and they were) extremely gimped compared to the vets, cause there was so much more they didn't know and there's no way for them to find out besides putting in the months and years..

In the end, none of them stayed. The hardcore playerkillers are playing godwars2 though, and the big reason for this is the completely OPEN culture surrounding that game that puts everyone on an even playing field, knowledge-wise.

Part of the frustration for me, as a newbie, was the fact that my character is "ablative". In the sense that armor is ablative. Once you die, your character is forever "lessened" relative to what they could have been. Die enough and you'll either burn trains on constitution that could have been spent on hp, or you'll just experience lesser gains due to your lower constitution. Etc.

Remove that penalty for dying and maybe it wouldn't sting as much. Or maybe it would have no effect. Just brainstorming.

Nuke the village and the game will be much easier for newbies.

is based on what data?

You could just login and type "who" followed by "count" but if you want actual data check this out:

http://mudstats.com/World/CarrionFields

Click Charts and Graphs

Look at Average Players By Season

It has data back to 2009. We've lost almost 50% of the playerbase since 2011, essentially. (Specifically, we've gone from an average of 27 online in 2011 to average of 14 online now.) And if you use the same website to browse muds, you'll see that there are still comparable-to-CF muds carrying solid playerbases (and I'm not talking about the adult/furry muds, which would be an unfair comparison).

There is a problem. It's fixable. And both the problem and solution go well beyond my one suggestion to make item info public, despite everyone's fixation on that particular thing.

It's population declining data.

I'm not sure what, if any, effect my lending support to this post will have, negative or positive, but for whatever it is worth I support each of these changes. I think DnD 5e is exactly the kind of overhaul (vs 3.5/PF) CF would need to become truly accessible to a new playerbase. It has done wonders (at least short term) for drawing in new people to the DnD universe.

I wish I could somehow lend some real weight to the arguments here in a way that allows for a tight feedback loop, but alas, forums is what we have.

I don't want to say that you're not looking hard enough, but at least 3 cabals not including Herald are right now full of pretty light-hearted, fun RP.

As your your assertion that basic survival is a constant drag, that's kinda been the gist of this game since it began.

I find that by worrying more about having fun than competing with the vets it's a pretty enjoyable game.

>I don't want to say that you're not looking hard enough, but
>at least 3 cabals not including Herald are right now full of
>pretty light-hearted, fun RP.

Define full. Current player count online is 25. It's prime time (7pm west coast, 9pm east coast USA).

>I find that by worrying more about having fun than competing
>with the vets it's a pretty enjoyable game.

So I guess there's no problem. That's nice!

>Define full.

Battle, Trib, Outlander, and Herald at the very least have multiple characters who spend more time engaging in goofy-rp and no-hard-feelings cabal wars.

Neither you nor I are going to beat the lich, but he's an amazingly well played character with a complex story who is willing to RP with his enemies.

If the only way you can have fun playing CF is to kill the lich you're going to be disappointed, but you're also falling victim to the notion that you can "win" CF.

>So I guess there's no problem. That's nice!

Are you the same guy who always comes along with the sarcastic noob card, or have you not done this before?

No, there is no problem.

"I can't beat the vets" is going to be a problem that you have in any competitive environment, but dumbing everything down is definitely not the answer.

Like a lot of things, the way to get better at CF is to play CF.

Rather than retool the world to suit your needs, you need to adapt to the world.

Getting around sucks, so roll a rager who has to walk everywhere, you'll learn your way around and death is a great incentive.

Being wanted sucks, so roll an outlander, and learn how to get around without running into mobs that are aggro on you.

Solo exploration is hard, so roll an Imperial. There are players who only derive enjoyment from this game by leading new players on heavy-duty explore adventures.

Hell, roll a Herald and be friends with everyone and learn how to get all the shinies.

Whatever part of the game is fun to you, focus on it and the rest will fall into place.

Unfortunately, if you're the guy who only finds "dominating my range 24/7" fun, then you're probably going to be disappointed, because some of these guys will always have 20+ years of experience on you.

But, if you play a character people like being around you'll find that things have a way of working out in your favor.

You're willfully misreading my post. Difficulty is not the problem. Lack of players is. Everything I mentioned are pointless barriers to entry for new players. Taking them down won't make the game easier, it'll make it take less time to get involved in things and lower the pain of entry. Elitists will not like this, but, soon they'll have nobody to admire their grand feat of time sinkage.

The notion that we're drawing new players from anywhere but other dying muds is not true.

No one is coming to CF from MMORPGs, but they are coming from games with similar interfaces with similar environments, so it's not like needing to interact with an immortal to get prayers is going to be the sort of thing that has never occurred to them.

As for the transparency, well, that's kinda the game.

Kill spider; look web; get wand web has been the way these games have gone since before the internet.

Now,I think that there should be more info about armor and preps available and now there are, which is a step in the right direction, but you really think that every limited barrier source should just be up for the asking?

What is the incentive then to go wandering into the caves looking at nooks and crannies?

>Now,I think that there should be more info about armor and
>preps available and now there are, which is a step in the
>right direction, but you really think that every limited
>barrier source should just be up for the asking?

In a word, yes.

If something is balance be only a few people knowing about it... It isn't balanced.

Don't get me wrong, I like transparency, but knowing skill/spell/power mechanics in detail is so much more of an advantage than knowing item stats/locations that it blows my mind you would ask for the latter.

This is pure speculation, but I think when the advantage gets too great to overcome (Emperor Lich), it affects people's desire to play.

It could have been coincidence, but there were more players following Sodsobs death than I had seen in a long time.

Because if a couple of people log in against the odds, others tend to feel safer to do so.

Also dying to someone that doesn't loot you is pretty much cost free. I tended to leave chars who looked new all of their gold as well as their gear. And vets like adira who died still got to keep all but one item in their very sweet sets. But people still wouldn't log on into my range. Mainly it was the so called elite players. And they probably have more knowledge than me, who still can't find my way around kiadana.

I did mention the Emperor specifically.

Without cabal powers, the Lich gathered an army in one spot without moving while he fought off 3 rager warriors with powers. Then he killed the giant and beat the crap out of the warriors killing one. I doubt he ever got below covered with wounds. I think he left because maybe he got bored. He certainly wasn't in any danger.

That's just ridiculous and why would anyone want to be in range of that thing? I mean, you all are talking about someone knowing where EQ is and restoring balance by publishing info...and not the fact that you could have full access to the source code and not stand a snowball's chance in hell against this character.

It's individual nature of ragers that leads to their fall. Three ragers combined have all the chances to kill Gaspare. The problem is that ragers somehow think parity has some meaning when you're confronting Emperor lich (hint - it hasn't). To kill Gaspare solo is a feat of heroic proportions worthy of replacing Thrym with whoever achieves it. Even if theoretically doable, the guy just won't walk into those special conditions.

What's more, having played games where every effort in the world goes to make sure that everything is completely "fair and balanced," I'm 99% convinced that MUDs are more fun when devs give up the notion.

RE: Gaspare - he's probably "too" powerful but he isn't on 100% of the time and, when he is, changing your victory condition from being able to win every fight to being able to survive and maybe stop him from getting what he wants (cabal item, your soul in a phylactery, etc.) is probably the answer. Having a character like a CF Lich around from time to time is good for creating the kinds of storylines that make MUDs appealing in 2016.

Also I have seen him gushing with protections fading multiple times within the last couple weeks... the player is not completely risk averse, which is to their credit, and I think the character is killable especially by a well orchestrated gank.

NT

..you could only play in the weeeeee hours of the morning with the Russians and a couple other players on at any given time.

Was your epeen just that big or were most people..you know..sleeping.

Whatever makes you feel like a winner. =P

It's really obvious when you experience it.

People will be on but none will be in your range.

When you log on, your range will empty.

If you log off for a piss and back on, people will be on but go again.

It's not just me. Every strong ap in recent times has found the same thing. Part of the reason I ranked to hero is that people stopped logging on when I was 36. Then when I got strong at hero, same thing happened. In the last couple of months things improved as people like laethlaeril and Laeden would not only stay on but also fight. Domond too. Didn't kill them but keep measuring me by your world view, if that helps you be happy.

I remember a few years back when I encountered a character who had a unique, coveted amulet. When he died and it poofed, he was able to replace it before he unghosted.

I was in awe and asked him how he was able to do it. "I'm not going to tell you that secret," he said, "because this piece of gear plays an integral part of every character I play."

CF has fostered a culture of secrets. Whether it is the list of wand locations or Silent Tower walkthroughs, who you know and what knowledge they are willing to share have been used in the sociology experiment known as CF since the beginning. It is ingrained into the culture of this mud, and it puts new and solo players at a disadvantage.

Good luck shifting that paradigm, as we have epeens to protect.

What's the point of having advantages over people? What does that actually prove?

That you're good being the bully?

PS This is not aimed at you, but the player you described.

I may not be the person with the most area knowledge or largest hoarde of secrets, but I'm far from the bottom either. Things like the wand changes actually increase the amount of collaboration and exploration that happens with players of all skill levels. Not just me getting the canteen of stone skin because I happen to know to go there right after a crash.

Knowing how spells/skills/powers work is why I usually ask for updated helpfiles when additional things get outlined on these forums. That info should be available, and being able to apply that knowledge is the skill, not the having of it. IRL the knowledge of how computers work is ostensibly what I get paid for, but the application of that knowledge is really what I do and half of what I "know" comes from google searches. My ability to successfully google stuff is like half of my job.

It would definitely be nice if illusions of limited preps that load on the ground or in hidden nooks/crannies were a thing, considering how much of a difference knowing where preps makes AND how impossible it is to figure them out without getting shown them if someone is holding onto them. That canteen is a funny example, I've been trying to figure out where it loads for something like 2 months now :P.

And something that appears to only work right after reboot, as far as I'm aware. I've gathered it that way at least. It *might* also be once per character, and because it is such a PITA I've never really explored the limits on it.

But after reboot is certainly the easiest time to get it, or kill everyone else as they arrive.

Incidentally it was my char who shared the canteen's location and I was unable to use it again for about a year after that because within a day multiple chars were grabbing it.

Cabdru had it and I made it a point to find out where it was.

It's the only secret in the game besides the Dragon Slayer I can really lay claim to being one of the first (not even close to the first though).

Incidentally, the first time I got the happy sleeves, I actually did the quest wrong because I got no spoon. Luckily for me it still "kinda" worked :)

Competitive playing field and all.

I had it long before cabdru existed.

My thief umble discovered it.

Now, ####, if there's a reboot there's often a THUNDERDOME style fight for the happy canteen. Pretty sure everyone in the game knows where it is now :)

Sure, it would be helpful if newb flagged players got potions and food handouts, to make the burden if provision less.

However, whenever we've seen things leaked, like sharkbait say, it ends up maxed out by a so called elite player.

When hell gear is posted, it isn't a bunch of newbs that collect it.

Whereas sharkbait was actually useable by a newb until a newb posted it on the forums. Because, guess what, some of us do share these things with newbs if there's an ic reason to do so. There are other examples, but one of the reasons Elystan is, imho, arguably the ap player with the most potential is that he finds stuff that so called elite players don't know about and makes good use of it. And he finds it in easy safe areas, that so called elite players assume has nothing worthwhile but newbs won't.

Part of what made me better at pk was finding routes other people didn't know about precisely because I didn't know the route everyone else did at that point.

I still don't know loads of stuff about the mud. Tsalantha made no use of silent tower despite being able to get in, never went to hell, didn't get inducted until hundreds of hours old. I was successful because of knowing when to use preps like enlarge, knowing when to focus on ac instead of hp unlike other vets (something a newb might do too), and then later because of odds and sods like wands of dispel (very low level), spinneret, and partial shifts, all of which get shown to people ic regularly. Just not power gamers.

The main hurdle for newbs that played other MUDs is their insistence on spamming skills with each char instead of learning the layout of a few areas well.

I would be in favour of letting newbs have ration points that could be exchanged for basic preps like enlarge, reduce, flight etc but I would also make it that those chars die when they have 10 pks. If you are getting more than 10 pks you can take on the challenge of self supply.

Always Duergar. Kravatnyk was one, more recently Maccaloye (and at least a couple of others I'm forgetting). Thing is, he seems to only have said knowledge, and little understanding of the basics. I grouped with him once and we were in the mid 20's and I was explaining how to gank someone and he hadn't even practiced bash. On a different character I was trying to bully him into taking the bloodoath. He led me into a pretty obvious trap with assassin backup, and slept me during the bloodoath lag (which I appreciated). Then he tried to zap me with a wand of malnourish. That was a terrible idea because I'm not sure it's even a malediction and it does damage when you fail the save, but the industry involved in going somewhere to check out what's on offer and then trying to use it when the situation finally presents itself was admirable. When I started throwing obscure but easily obtained things like minor malison and enfeeble into my own sleep game I was pretty happy with myself, and am often baffled when other people don't use obvious things like plague malison. Plus I'm still quite amused that my awesome lowbie spam spot (hey these mobs are throwing out a lot of misses, wonder what would happen if I buffed my AC) sees hardly any traffic despite having told everyone in the black sect about it.

Anyway Kravatnyk is always a free PK but he's a bit of an odd one, I'm not sure if he illustrates that doing your own research only works when you already have a reasonable grasp on established wisdom, or if he's just an individual.

To any imms who might read this, if you know the guy I mean and spot him getting walked all over and not deleting, please give the guy some juice.

It might be one of the things that makes CF CF, but it's not one of the things that makes CF an RP/PK mud.

I myself am the type of player who gets most of the fun from "dominating my range 24/7". Of course I don't get this type of fun to its fullest due to some notorious 20+ year vets, but amount of enjoyment I get from the game is massively overwhelming.