I know several people are disappointed that October forms aren't going to be implemented in the same way this year. It's understandable - "October forms" are a fun addition and a welcome variation, and they have begun to feel like a tradition.

The excitement and novelty of these forms is a blessing, but it is also a curse. An issue with shapeshifters in general is that players prefer to speedrank without developing their characters, and only put in effort if they get their favorite forms around hero - otherwise, they just delete. I completely understand this behavior; the system incentivizes it. The "Spin the Wheel" and "Roll the Dice" edges were designed to make this less common - and they probably have - but they haven't eliminated it altogether.

The October forms have had the effect of causing a surge in this kind of behavior, which most of us in IMMland view as a normal, but unfortunate, consequence of the randomized shapeshifter mechanic.

Some of you said we should have announced this earlier. You're right. Our own internal communication could use some work; we're all aware of that. But I can tell you that there is hard work going on behind the scenes.

Some of us have had major life events, medical issues, increased pressure at work, etc., which has led to some unplanned disappearances from this game. Certain areas of the game will sometimes suffer accordingly. Right now, coding and general implementation of major changes are among those areas.

However, other areas are becoming more interesting and active than they have been in years. Expect more quests and storylines, and more chances to get involved in memorable events - including a series this month (check the calendar!)

As for October forms, they aren't dead. There are still possibilities for changes in the future, and have no doubt that there will be ideas thrown around up in IMMland. If you'd like to share your feelings or ideas on the subject, please feel free to do so below. I can't promise your ideas will be implemented, but I can promise that we will listen.

Thanks everyone!

That said, I'm in that "niche" zone of players who would really enjoy a cool boon to shapeshifters during the month of October, but yeah.

We never had so low numbers at this time of the day. I'm sure some bastards making POS work are responsible for this.

But the idea of low insvestment characters vs high investment characters has it's flaws which can be easily seen using who command.


P.S. If there are low investment characters whom you can level up with for at least first 42 levels it's already huge bonus for our game.

Playstyle aimed at driving people offline and actions aimed at people being banned have their flaws that can easily be seen using the who command.

Seriously, what? I could see your argument, sort of, if you only put the banned part but the play-style aimed at driving people offline is like you're talking with yourself.

nt

I was more referring to their play style, which seemed to be the focus of his post, which both Shapa and Ktstadia seem to be pkill count = winning the game mentality. Even at the cost of "driving players offline" from multikilling them.

That said, I think have some small agreement with the intent behind what Shapa was trying to get across if I understood him correctly. I'd probably even come back if the game felt a bit more balanced/tuned towards the fun side and less towards serious side. I always liked the balance it used to feel to have. I sort of feel like two camps have come into being, where they are either super serious about PVP or super serious about RP to the point neither seem as fun as they used to be. Though, I do wonder if that isn't just my own rose tinted glasses as I get old. It's very hard to be perfectly objective in a game that excites so much passion in people.

You're welcome to study how many people I have multikilled and find out you're ####ting yourself by stating that.

Which only makes you a laughing stock.

First, I apologize for biting on your troll against Shapa. Normally I do not, but the irony of what you posted and the fact I dislike you caused a moment of weakness. I'm sure you're just continuing to troll or responding defensively, but just in case I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume you truly do not realize how you seem to some. I know I myself am often blind to how others perceive me and it is difficult to stop and take stock of ourselves in these situations.

I'm going to answer honestly and hope you don't take offense. The reason I say what I did is both due to personal experience with you in the game and the things you say in the forums. I perceive you to be solely, or nearly solely, focused on PK to the point of tunnel vision blinding you to any other aspect of a game. You seem to care only about PK wins and some sort of gaming elitism where if you aren't having the top PK wins, or top whatever in other games, then you have no value. You seem to have a very egotistical view of yourself and focus on what's good only for yourself. When you play, you spend hours and hours doing nothing but trying to kill whoever is visible with only the slightest nod to RP. Shapa tends to play similar from what I've seen. This is why I was surprised that you would complain about his play style when from what I've witnessed in game and in forums they tend to be very similar. Obviously this is from my small point of view and I very well may have missed out on a lot of amazing interactions you've had and whatever the mention of bitter points of Shapa are. This is why I really shouldn't have responded, but maybe this will help you understand where I am coming from.

Now all this said, I honestly don't have a problem with you, or anyone, being allowed to play in a manner that ignores the RP and exploration faucets of the game. I would rather have completely 100% PK focused players playing the game than not having them at all. It doesn't mean I have to agree with them or like them though which is fine because people are allowed to disagree. I want CF to remain a place where all player types are welcome to enjoy in a balanced manner that brings fun to everyone. I do wish some, such as you, would be slightly more classy and thoughtful towards those with other view points, but again those differences are the slices of life that make it interesting in the end. Hell, even though I probably have less than 50 PKs in my 20 years of playing, I still disagree with removing edge points from PK completely. I love the thrill of the risk PK adds and the feel of winning or successfully getting away. With the current low levels, however, you can just feel tired when the same person continuously harasses you for hours on end because they want one more pkwin at which point you just don't even want to log in.

Finally, if you even read this, I don't really care if I am "####ting myself" or a "laughing stock" in a video game forum. It doesn't matter much. I only still read and post here because I still love the game and hope for it to make a come back and for new generations to find the enjoyment I had from the amazing game it was and to some degree still is. I hope you stick around. I hope Shapa sticks arounds. Most of all, I hope people just have fun and stop being so serious about dumb #### that doesn't really matter at the end of the day. That would go further than any change to the game could possibly do. And yeah, I know I am guilty of this myself.

What you see, I am, and I'm proud of that.

But I don't grief ppl, and I'm proud of that too. They have hard enough time being curbstomped *nightlaugh*.

nt

First, thank you for your post.

With random forms, you will not eliminate fast ranking shifters that want to know their forms before they dump even more extra time into developing their char. That doesn't mean they don't RP and add to the game. It just means the *real* meat of the game doesn't start for them until level 42ish or 49ish.

To lessen this effect, I strongly recommend letting people see their final forms at a much lower level. Say, 25-30. This simply saves everyone involved time that could be better spent on a char you will invest in and develop which is what I think you want. I am having trouble thinking of a downside to this solution and it would be easy to code.

> To lessen this effect, I strongly recommend letting people see their final forms at a much lower level.

I'd rather just let people just pick their forms. But I grant that it would erase a major part of the class's design. The argument that allowing players to choose forms would lead to certain forms being vastly more popular never felt compelling to me, for two reasons:

1. That's already true with other game choices (e.g. some weapon specs are more popular than others, some paladin dedications are more popular than others, some thief paths are more popular than others, etc.)

2. If it a concern, the forms could be balanced so that they're roughly equally popular. Boost unpopular forms, nerf popular forms. Voila.

Not something I feel strongly about though.

Besides being useful on its own, this will also let them influence their 1st tier forms via exclusion mechanic (of course it should be known what excludes what).

"The excitement and novelty of these forms is a blessing, but it is also a curse. An issue with shapeshifters in general is that players prefer to speedrank without developing their characters, and only put in effort if they get their favorite forms around hero - otherwise, they just delete. I completely understand this behavior; the system incentivizes it. The "Spin the Wheel" and "Roll the Dice" edges were designed to make this less common - and they probably have - but they haven't eliminated it altogether.

The October forms have had the effect of causing a surge in this kind of behavior, which most of us in IMMland view as a normal, but unfortunate, consequence of the randomized shapeshifter mechanic. "

You can't only have super duper serious characters. If I play in October specifically to try and get a Halloween form (which was my plan), you should be glad I'm putting in 40-50 hours into the game, but instead you'd rather have 0 hours and one less PC. How is that more fun for anyone?

If I'm not entitled to Halloween forms, you aren't entitled to uber-developed well thought out characters that are going to put in 500 hours no matter what.

First off, thank you for your opinion.

I started this thread because I saw another conversation about this veering off into something caustic and unproductive. I had no part in that previous, now-hidden conversation and I do not want to resurrect it here.

Instead, I did my best (albeit imperfectly) to sum up the "official" IMMstaff opinion as I understand it. There is definitely some nuance and difference of opinion among the individual IMMs, including me.

My point was that this wasn't some unanimous decision, but it is also not completely unreasonable. I'm not going to the mat to attack or defend anyone or their arguments. I'd just like to bring this all back to civility.

You have every right to be disappointed. You expected things would be the same this year as they have been for the last few, and we told you way later than we should have that this was not going to be the case. I can imagine there would be worldwide riots if Starbucks announced today that they're not going to serve those god-awful pumpkin spice drinks anymore.

You're right, by the way: Not every character can or needs to be great. Some of mine have involved minimal effort, and I had a lot of fun with them and, I think, provided a lot of fun for others. I don't hate on people who don't have roles, or characters who aren't "uber-developed." I'd just hope that those characters are still fun or interesting for other people to interact with.

In my own opinion, which isn't worth much for a variety of reasons, I love October forms and think the upsides outweigh the downsides. But both as a mort and as an IMM, I have seen there are real downsides; people drop established characters to roll a bunch of robot-like power-rankers who are boring to interact and rank with and delete as soon as the Halloween forms lose their lustre.

It also just doesn't seem like fun - no one should have to spend 40+ hours to get to hero only to learn that they're getting a form they don't like. Maybe some people love it(?), but I don't.

The current system incentivizes that almost compulsive, un-fun behavior, so I don't feel players themselves bear much of the blame for playing that meta-gambling-game. I'd love to see a better solution. I just don't know how to do it right, and I wouldn't be able to implement it even if I did.

Anyway, this will probably be my last substantive post on this particular issue. The big messages I hope you all take away from this is that we appreciate your opinions, we're sorry for not communicating better, we understand your frustrations, and we are listening.

I really enjoy(ed) ranking shifters and seeing how fast I could get to hero. I know some people hate the grind but it was usually something I looked forward to. The shifter lottery was also great. There is like a surge of optimism followed by a bitter feeling of defeat or anxious reading trying to figure out what form you got upon seeing the bonus text that means you got a form. Sometimes this feeling is followed by more defeat and sometimes just a feeling of ####yeahness. I can think of many many shifter characters I rolled with no goal that deleted before 51 that had no purpose that I didn’t claim.

I’m not playing but I know the disappointment is real for a lot of people!

The whole mindset of saying people need to heavily invest time/energy/effort into roles and backstories and interactions and pouring hours and hours into a character is the same mindset that has prevented me from even wanting to play for a while. It’s like saying ‘no no casual gamer, go back to hearthstone, you have no place here anymore.’ So that is good for me because I for sure don’t need to mud anymore right now but it’s probably bad for people who don’t have other obligations.

So I guess I see why IMMs don’t want casual players for immersion purposes but I think I would reestablish player numbers before axing anything fun that would have increased them even if temporarily. Please disregard if player numbers are doing good in the last few months. I haven’t been on forums or CF. Just wanted to put in my .02 about ranking shifters being fun.

i'm a guy that hovers between 80 to 120 hours. i don't feel like i have a place in CF other than what i make of it. i play to have fun and help others have fun with both pk and rp.

CF is not an investment. it's a game.

by and large throughout CF's history, immortals have missed the boat by not doing stuff sooner than later. it's sadly common for a char to delete only for an imm to chime in about promotion, leader, reward, tat, empowerment, whatever. why wait?

you say that great chars can get rewarded with an october form. truth is you'll wait too long. you know it, i know it. it's what you do.

i wish we'd go back to vintage CF. rewards for underdogs, big rewards for small things, overpowered rewards, rewards for kicking ass. as long as you stay out of the Baer-rewards for player favortism we'll be fine.

but this whole notion that hours equal quality is stupid, or that quality for 200+ hours is prerequisite, is stupid. the vast majority of cf'ers can't and won't commit to that. some do, and kudos.

but i think you all need to take a hard look at how you dungeon-master CF and start removing the Valguarnera parts of it. including the heroimm->imm process.

thanks.


**edit to add: a case in point is still the Maran process. i have a squire that shoulda been Maran 50 hours ago. i'll never play maran again because of this stupid 100+ hour requirement. and i like korsgaard's player, much respect, but i haven't played much of late because it annoys me so much. sorry but my funstick went limp needlessly.

When we don't reward, other people cry. It is literally a no win situation because everyone thinks their own character is amazing and if someone else gets a reward its "Baer-rewards for player favortism."

Regarding the hours thing, its not that hours = quality. Its that hours = investment and the reward comes from said investment. If someone can successfully accomplish quality in low hours, I am quite happy to give them rewards too. A big disconnect is how quality is defined by each of us, and I don't think that is something that will ever be fully agreed upon.

Imm gifted rewards are no-win situations. Get rid of them altogether.

Regarding people leveling and deleting with low investment - 99% of my characters are like that (I play for me, not the immortals) and 100% of Funnyone's characters are like that. Does it REALLY bother you that much?

I've got no interest in getting rid of imm rewards. I don't view them as a no-win situation.

I am not bothered by low-investment characters. I just don't notice them as much as invested characters, and I don't care about them as much. If I see a low-invest char doing something cool by chance though, I reward them. So it's not like it has no opportunity, it just has to do with a general care for quality-of-play.

I've actually seen a decent chunk of low-investment chars (that deleted earlier) who I really liked. But I fully admit my gaze is pulled substantially more by characters who are more in depth, consistent, and cool.

-Ish

And her rewards are op.

I say that having received scourge of the violet spider on a lawful good warlock conjurer.

The worst though was giving an ap barrier on a stick, and not even requiring them to hero to use it.

Her favouritism was an issue but became less so when she started looking after the evils for a bit as well as the goods.

I think everyone enjoys a small perk that rewards various behaviors in game that encourage the fun and excitement in the game. It's more the balance and fairness that comes into the problem which is why I always felt there should be an actual in place system that describes how and when rewards could be applied and forced a bit of spread to keep bias from being too strong. I had proposed a player based karma system before but no reason imms couldn't have a similar system based on tiers and hard coded, assuming any time could be made for such a thing. Even just a written up rule that is known to both players and imms and enforced could make rewarding players fun for both the imms and the players. Yes, you'll still have some people complaining about fairness no matter what but those same ones will claim you made super secret #### in your areas just to pick on them so not much you can do but ignore those ones.

The ideas is that imms could propose rewards based on the tier of the reward. An easy one is small amounts of immexp towards edge points. This could be any imm could give freely up to a certain amount each day and perhaps not to the same character more than twice in a row. Tier two would be actually giving cheap edges outright which maybe would be only allowed to be given once a month per imm and, again, not to the same character twice in a row. Tier 3 would be giving moderate edges and might requires a mid ranked imm or above approval first on top of the proposing imm. Tier 4 would be expensive edges/lower level forms and require three imms to agree, while tier 5 would be giving actual skills/quest forms/whatever and require multiple imms to vote on it once proposed. Something like this would balance the cries of favoritism I think since imm agreement and forced spreading of love would mean a better balance.

On a side note, over my 20 years playing I've seen, and experienced, that those who get the most rewards are those who follow a religion closely since they have more face time with immortals. This was something I had hoped to work around if I ever immed being able to seek out those who are simply having fun and making the game fun for others even if they are uncaballed or not following a God. I think uncaballed get left out a lot and would be cool if there was an imm or two whose entire focus was just focusing on those riffraff not in the shrine clubs.

Completely agree that it feels like CF has no room for casuals anymore who can't put serious hours of investment into characters.

I'm square in the casual bucket these days, but I still try some degree of roleplay, a bit of humor, teaching newer folks old tricks, and generally helping people level. My last character was dinged 1000 imm xp for reusing an old description from a previous throwaway character. Was it against the rules and technically a punishable offense? Yes it was. Was I ruining anyone's fun stick or in any way lessening anyone's experience? Nope.

I'm not sure why, but some imm having the time to go searching through history to find my description somewhere else to punish me for it really left a bad taste in my mouth. Circling back to the shifter discussion, it all boils down to you guys being more worried about players following your prescribed path to fun rather than them enjoying the game they've loved for 20 years how and where they can.

I'm pretty sure it's hard coded to flag a char when their desc matches one in the archive that's automatically generated somehow.

I recently had a char that was told to change his name (it was Chunth). The next login after I did, I got -1000 IMM xp for reusing a desc. After I explained in a note that the cause was probably the name change, I got the 1000 IMM xp restored. The code thought I reused Chunth's desc because it matched a character of a different name though it was the same character.

Anyway, good bug exploit I discovered: Get penalized like that and get it reversed to get +% to skills for the IMM xp to reverse the penalty, then repeat. (For the 1-2 IMMs without a sense of humor, I was joking about exploiting this bug).

Now I must ding you -100,000 immxp and slay you!
(Similarly a joke, I thought yours was funny)


I remember this, though, since I was the one who changed your name. When the ding happened I was surprised, but it was an easy enough fix. Your note is what made it easy, though, I don't know of a way for us to notice it otherwise. So good on you!


-Ish

I agree with every point here. Game is much more fun when there are all kinds of cool rewards going out. More quest forms, extra legacies, special weapons, customized appearances, bonus skills/spells, unique items....



The method of 'making everything harder' on the playbase doesn't seem to be working.

>I know several people are disappointed that October forms
>aren't going to be implemented in the same way this year. It's
>understandable - "October forms" are a fun addition and a
>welcome variation, and they have begun to feel like a
>tradition.
>
>The excitement and novelty of these forms is a blessing, but
>it is also a curse. An issue with shapeshifters in general is
>that players prefer to speedrank without developing their
>characters, and only put in effort if they get their favorite
>forms around hero - otherwise, they just delete. I completely
>understand this behavior; the system incentivizes it. The
>"Spin the Wheel" and "Roll the Dice" edges were designed to
>make this less common - and they probably have - but they
>haven't eliminated it altogether.
>
>The October forms have had the effect of causing a surge in
>this kind of behavior, which most of us in IMMland view as a
>normal, but unfortunate, consequence of the randomized
>shapeshifter mechanic.
>
>Some of you said we should have announced this earlier. You're
>right. Our own internal communication could use some work;
>we're all aware of that. But I can tell you that there is hard
>work going on behind the scenes.
>
>Some of us have had major life events, medical issues,
>increased pressure at work, etc., which has led to some
>unplanned disappearances from this game. Certain areas of the
>game will sometimes suffer accordingly. Right now, coding and
>general implementation of major changes are among those areas.
>
>
>However, other areas are becoming more interesting and active
>than they have been in years. Expect more quests and
>storylines, and more chances to get involved in memorable
>events - including a series this month (check the calendar!)
>
>As for October forms, they aren't dead. There are still
>possibilities for changes in the future, and have no doubt
>that there will be ideas thrown around up in IMMland. If you'd
>like to share your feelings or ideas on the subject, please
>feel free to do so below. I can't promise your ideas will be
>implemented, but I can promise that we will listen.
>
>Thanks everyone!

Any thought in significantly reducing the cost of these edges? The standard Imm line is that no forms are more powerful than others, they're just different. So spending edge points on these two edges does not make the character more powerful in any way.

Basically, that means it's a huge opportunity cost to use them, especially since they are both rather expensive and edge points are now very limited. For those players that can rank up to near-hero in a few days, it usually makes more sense to just delete and re-roll.

Considering that they don't actually provide a benefit (apart from saving the player from deleting/re-rolling), why not make them the minimal cost (ie, 1 edge point) or even free? The only possible outcome that I could see is that players would switch their final forms more often, which would make it more likely that they would stick around. Players wouldn't be any more powerful, so there's no downside.

(I wrote this before Rahsael posted, but it fits the same theme, and issue, so here it is!)
Since people have some strong feelings about Halloween forms, let’s keep it all to this thread. Though I’d appreciate it if it was kept to constructive dialogue instead of insults or anything like that.

With that said, here’s my general consideration so that there is some general transparency about what imms are thinking. We typically try to make some events or fun-stuff happen monthly, and October is no exception. Given the Halloween-styled themes, it’s an even more prime month for fun stuff. Lots of people, as part of this, tend to look forward to the Halloween shifter forms. But, despite people liking them, they don’t always happen (see: http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=64852&mesg_id=64855&page= ).

As October came around, we actually hadn’t had a serious cohesive conversation about whether Halloween forms were happening or not. That delay is clearly unappreciated by some folks, and I can understand that. But given how busy things get, some stuff gets knocked back even in terms of talking it out. Some imms were for Halloween forms, some were against, but overall given some of the factors mentioned by Jormyr in his first response, they ended up being a no for this year. Does this mean it won’t happen every year? No, it’s a remaining possibility, but it’s definitely not something to expect. That’s why there weren’t any early posts saying it would happen.

Since that didn’t work out so well, I’ll try to be more proactive in making sure things that are “expected” get a bit more feedback as to whether they’re happening or not.

Putting that aside, shapeshifters still have the opportunities to get additional forms (including quest forms) if they’re amazing characters. I know that’s a higher standard than “Roll in October”, but I do like to reiterate that there is some cool stuff available for folks who are cool.

In addition to that, keep an eye on the CF Calendar for October themed events! As it is not only the month of Halloween, but Orctober, I hope to see some orcs that I can give some special attention to. :)

-Ish


PS - What Rahsael said.


Edited to add: After some general deliberation, I've hidden the previous thread so we can try to use this thread as a more productive location and setting for the conversation. No insult intended to anyone who took part in the prior one! Hopefully this doesn't come across as a jerk move, since that's not the intent.

>Bring me an orctober I'll never forget.

You'd have to unban me first lol :)

Send in an email about it and a conversation can get started. That is... If you really want to get unbanned :).

-Ish



PS: I really do hope some orcs roll, though, they're my favorite race.

But I don't remember anyone writing me an e-mail before banning me :)

Emails aren't usually sent prior to ban, particularly since I (we) have no idea of knowing what someone's email is as to their character and the like. So alas, it is unfair and one-sided, but that is how it is.

So if you're interested, toss in that email!

I won't spam this thread with it anymore, but was just sharing in case you or others didn't know.


-Ishuli