I'll make this as succinct as possible, but long story short I think the current state of CF could be drastically improved.

Firstly, there's the cabal situation. I'm not satisfied with the staff's answer of "Well we're at where were at. Nothings changing. But we're talking." What does that mean? Especially when Scarab and Entropy are two cluster####s of cabals.

Entropy has no purpose, I get the ad pitch of 'you can do anything' but that doesn't add to the cabal dynamic in CF. They aren't a reasonable foil to Battle, and I don't think they're substantially different from Outlander. There are not many Entropists who wouldn't equally fit into Outlander. I've played neo-Entropy, and they don't really contribute to cabal wars. I've never had to retrieve from Entropy, and I doubt I ever will. This project, plain and simple, is not working in the current climate of CF.

Scarab is absolutely nonexistent. It's dead. Scion at it's most bereft was better than the current iteration of Scarab. If there's applicants, someone needs to induct them. We shouldn't need to, as players, wait for hundreds of hours for an induction. Especially with today's more casual playerbase.

At the very least, lets throw Arcane sect back into Empire or bring Nexus back and make them more veil-centric (the veil is SUCH a cool mechanic that is being underused)...or...better yet, let's have an ACTUAL magic cabal. You can make it skew evil chaotic (similar to how Scion did.) But lets give badass evil mages a home, and coincidentally an actual ENEMY for Battle to fight. Who the hell does Battle raid nowadays? The nonexistent Entropy and Scarab? Cool.

Final thing about cabals, it seems like we've made cabals more difficult in general. Now its three mage kills before you can become a berserker. Or 100 hours at least before you get Maran. Let's not put such standardization into a freeflowing game. If you're a hotshot badass squire who's kicking ass and taking names...Maran your ass at 50 hours.

Secondly, I feel as if there are a few glaring imbalances in the game. I've been on my soapbox for a while about this, and I understand that there are steps you can take to mitigate the effectiveness, but someone has got to take a serious look at champions, and in particular storm champions.

The trade off to being a paladin is you typically don't really have a reliable source of lag. Plus, two-handers and shield deds are always at extreme risk of being shield cleaved/weapon dropped and getting one rounded (outside of defiance/a couple of high lim shields). The passive ability of bat to block weapon removal skills is NUTS. I think I tried to use a special disarm skill on one of the recent storm paladins 8 times and got through the retaliate aspect of bat to ATTEMPT it precisely once. Not to mention the fact that they outmelee prepped up rangers in their home terrain. Out-tank (and outmelee) almost any warrior without even trying. Oh, AND they have a fairly reliable form of lag. Furthermore, nearly all of their skills lag them for a round or less, so even if they DO get into trouble, it's very hard to punish them for it because they so very rarely lag themselves.

If there IS a change behind the scenes, let's publicize it and voice it instead of just magically shifting something without ever telling the playerbase.

Furthermore, the ranking disparity between good and evil. Holy ####. Ranking as a goodie is GROSSLY easy. Ranking as an evil can be hair-pulling. I can think of 4-5 places where I can (easily) hero goodies. There's ONE (maybe two) really viable places to hero evils. Hell, most of my evils hero on evil mobs just because it's that much better. Not to mention the ability as a goodie to exploit double vulns for ranking, really easily, from lvls 25-51.

Evils have iron and elves, but it's not even close. Seriously, this needs to be looked at. Ranking as an evil should not be that much more difficult than it is as a goodie. This is compounded by the fact that with the closure of hell, I'd argue that most of the high end gear trends toward good and is ultimately unusable by evils.

And from a reward/punishment perspective...I don't know. It feels like Imms are really hands-off nowadays. Titles are a rarity. Tattoos are similar. Getting a last name now seems to be a 'time put in' and it's not uncommon for me to get my last name and then type who and notice 5-6 other characters got theirs at the exact same time, so some imm just decided to mass lastname people. Much like we hit on in Artificial's post below, there are very few 'special' rewards, and it seems like longevity is more important in reaching them than anything else (bleh). Those things add so much to the game, and could really stand to be more common.

On the OTHER hand, at the same time there seems to be very little 'hammer dropping' on ####tily roleplayed characters. I'm looking at you, repeat herald gearlockers and empowerment characters with absolutely no roleplay. I understand that we made empowerment easier, but if you're an empowered character and you show no signs of roleplay to speak of? Unempower them. Straight up. And if you're a herald but are NEVER in the Inn and aren't doing anything remotely herald-y? That's an issue too. Similar to a tribunal who breaks the law, a rager who disgraces the tablet, etc. There needs to be consequences for crappy RP.

More global quests, more unique titles to hint sort of what a character might be about, or interactions (positive and negative) could be really good for the game. And I don't like the idea that longevity is a threshold for that.

I'm not trying to start a mud slinging contest, I'm just trying to draw attention to what I feel are a number of glaring issues in the current state of Carrionfields. I've loved this game and community for 17 years and I think that we could do with some more open discussion and transparency about how to improve things.

-Shamanman

"On the OTHER hand, at the same time there seems to be very little 'hammer dropping' on ####tily roleplayed characters. I'm looking at you, repeat herald gearlockers and empowerment characters with absolutely no roleplay. I understand that we made empowerment easier, but if you're an empowered character and you show no signs of roleplay to speak of? Unempower them. Straight up. And if you're a herald but are NEVER in the Inn and aren't doing anything remotely herald-y? That's an issue too. Similar to a tribunal who breaks the law, a rager who disgraces the tablet, etc. There needs to be consequences for crappy RP."

Confused here, are you upset because Heralds might get gear or are you angry they’re not in the Inn enough to suit you or is their Rp inferior to yours and you find it offensive? If it’s the roleplay, show us how it’s done. Roll one up and be the change you’re after. As for calling them gearlockers, go cry to your mama. No one in the game is impossible to kill, go kill them. But don’t whine because they’re not making it easier for you. Otherwise be an equal opportunity whiner and whine about everyone who has things you want. Being a Herald is not a ‘job’. As per the help. That being said, it also comes with next to no concrete anything, in the realm of making them tougher to kill or the like. If they go out and get gear you want, oh well. It’s not like they don’t die or help others get gear too. They keep stuff flowing more than many cabals and tend to help pretty much anyone, good or evil, mage or mage hater, etc. But again, if you are the authority, by all means show us how it’s done.

If you don't realize, the current crop of imm knows that too.

They want to SELL that game, BUT, there is a big ####ing no, to those clowns, there is the buissnes agreement, where they can't sell it by their own, even HIGH level imps (read MOTD). So their strategy is to kill the game, report to guys who owns it and say " DAMN, CF, HAZ 0 PPL ONLINE, ZELL IT PLEASE", and pray that it will work.

They, IMMS, are not idiots, they want to have money as well. Sure, some of them don't want to do it, but the big huge rest - want. So you don't see updates, you see the immhate, and the other ####.

To idiots: it will not work.

BUT ...

It seems like all your money is tied up in whoopie pills.

:)

I think the attitude of this is exactly why the game has taken a severe and hard ####. Too many players with your thought process and attitude...

There's not enough people playing to warrant the changes you are screaming for. So why would anyone put in the effort...

Games are meant to be fun, I interpret what you write coming from someone who can't do that when playing a video game. Specifically this one.

GO OUTSIDE, you are missing parents who tell you to do that instead of spending 24-7 in a mud and then bitching bout it.

"I'm looking at you, repeat herald gearlockers and empowerment characters with absolutely no roleplay. I understand that we made empowerment easier, but if you're an empowered character and you show no signs of roleplay to speak of? Unempower them. Straight up. And if you're a herald but are NEVER in the Inn and aren't doing anything remotely herald-y? That's an issue too."

Are you trying to bitch about a particular herald bard here? Anyone else??

Don't post as active characters, outside of goodbye threads.

You as a player and Noirra as a character are different entitites, with different thoughts, emotions and beliefs. You don't want to conflate the two. That can cause your own RP to suffer (ie, you start acting as the player would, instead of the character), and it can inadvertently affect people's opinion of Noirra the character.

In other words, there is literally no benefit to using the Noirra handle here. All you'll end up doing is hurting your own enjoyment in-game, and ruining the immersion for the rest of the playerbase.

Eh doesn't matter to me, kinda done with cf and only have a hand full of days (like 3-4 tops) before I can't play.

I more or less agree with the original post, but not entirely in the same way or general complaints department. We all have buttholes...

>Eh doesn't matter to me, kinda done with cf and only have a
>hand full of days (like 3-4 tops) before I can't play.
>
>I more or less agree with the original post, but not entirely
>in the same way or general complaints department. We all have
>buttholes...

These really aren't appropriate things to say under an active character's name. Please stop, regardless of how many days left you intend to play, or we'll just round that number down to zero for you. Thanks.

If my "opinion" offends you then nuke the character and help prove the other peoples points about the muds imms.

I enjoyed Noirra as much as a necromancer can. There needs to be a picture hung in the paladin guild in your honour.

GLWYN

No one said you can't have your opinion.

They said not to contaminate your live character with it.

So grow up and stop claiming they said something else, and getting a martyr complex.

Just post using a forum handle and don't link that handle to your live characters. It's really simple.

ninjaturtles

Way to showcase your dearth of intelligence. People are trying to help you but you're just flipping them the bird.

Shouldn't matter if I post an opinion or post that I won't be able to play anymore in a few days with an active character on the forum. The forum and what goes on in game are 2 different things and I can keep the two separate. I was indirectly hoping certain people would see it and give me a chance to say good bye in person by logging in or being vis... Oh well.

I also always post with my active characters name.

Just some clarification to my original post. I am pretty annoyed with the attitude of the initial poster regarding the state of the game. In general I think the player base is more damaging to Cf then anything else... My initial response wasn't the best I admit. I agree with some of the stuff said. Some crap thrown indirectly at specific player(s) which I find amusing and annoying. I believe the game is what it is and I enjoy it as it is! Thankful we have it to play!!

Long time game dev, 18+ years(not a programmer though or I would try to help). I see a lot of the same type of things in games I've worked on. Similar forum rants, user reviews. Wishing and wanting of this and that type of changes so the game is "that persons" idea of a perfect game etc. Epic love, Epic hate! Sometimes they are right sometimes they are vastly wrong.

Wishing and wanting is great, it means someone "loves" the game and wants more. However "players" also have to realize the game is what it is. Often that state of the game is what the people who made it wanted it to be like. Or it's the best they could do with the resources and time they had to make it. <--Cf fits that.

Love CF and want to make a difference? Learn to code and get involved. Maybe you will never get to on CF. You may be able to on another game you like. Or you'll get a chance to make a new game someone else loves and cherishes. Cf and a few other games is why I got into video games dev. Some food for thought. 75k average starting salary in Seattle area for engineers(actually closer to 105K at good companies). My friends with 10+ years experience make 150-250k a year writing code for games/media/entertainment software and hardware. Significantly higher then engineers who work at Boeing making planes fly which is funny. If a plane crashes it kills people. If a video game crashes, people nerd rage and or just restart...

After being absent for 10-15 years I was shocked to find CF still up and running and I am super thankful people are keeping it up and going. I've logged 1200+ hours on 5 characters since returning 12 or so months ago.

Fun times... Thanks.

But it is YOUR opinion. A human being behind a keyboard. It isn't (and shouldn't be) the opinion of Noirra, the Storm giant Tribunal.

If you can keep the forums separate from your character, great. But you're putting the rest of the playerbase in a challenging position expecting them to do the same. Especially when you're openly being rude to the administrators of the game.

But then, and the fact that you admitted you wanted people to "say goodbye in person" is proof that you don't actually want the forum persona and game to be separate anyways. Joe Magistrate should have no idea that Noirra is only around for a couple more days, unless Noirra told him in-game. Doing so would be breaking role, and doing the exact thing that you were saying should be avoided literally one sentence earlier.

You say you "always post with active characters". The fact that you always do it doesn't make it smart or a good decision. Re-think it, because all you're doing is harming your own character, and harming the enjoyment of the rest of the playerbase. There is literally no upside to it.

"But then, and the fact that you admitted you wanted people to "say goodbye in person" is proof that you don't actually want the forum persona and game to be separate anyways. Joe Magistrate should have no idea that Noirra is only around for a couple more days, unless Noirra told him in-game. Doing so would be breaking role, and doing the exact thing that you were saying should be avoided literally one sentence earlier."

I guess that's your opinion...

However, I prefer to have an in game good bye if I can get the chance. Had one with jormyr, one of my previous pallies god at the time and it was a blast BSing in N out of char about playing cf 15+ years ago. It actually motivated me to keep playing vs stopping...

When you spend 350+ hours playing a character you will make friends in game who will miss you if you just up and vanish... Or maybe you only make characters with persona's that are epic douches and nobody likes you I dunno. 200+ 300+ 400+ hour romping around thera with someone and you just vanish on them?? I'd rather they know I had fun playing with them, will miss them and I WANT THEM TO KNOW THAT! Didn't get to chat with Panmorne, Ishuli and one other all they got were notes, but oh well...

Not everyone comes back to see or say good byes of the forums unfortunately.

So I am probably going to be more active at least for a while, so those two things will probably start to increase.

Awesome people beware, you will be rewarded for it.

Cheaters beware, you will be denied for it.

Battle should have an opposing cabal to fight. Entropy doesn't cut it nor is it really meant to from the Entropy end.

It's not that I don't like the Entropy cabal. I think it's a solid idea with opportunity but it shouldn't be occupying a whole cabal space by itself because the characters tend to be so aloof. You need something else that's going to be more influential to the rest of the game.

I think they should just bring back some or all the old magey type cabals and throw them under one mage tower roof, each sect of the tower having their own goals and cabal powers but sharing one item and devotion to magic. Sort of like how Outlander has the three branches with each their own powers.


For instance, combine Entropy with Nexus for mages and have each be a sect in the cabal. Maybe even throw in something like Scion for the evil wizards out there. Just use old cabal powers already in game.

General comment: much of what you want to see is dependent on staff presence, and, like the player base, staff with the ability to hand out rewards, police crappy role-play, etc. are in shorter supply than they once were. It's not that staff have deprioritized these things; there just aren't as many staff as there used to be.


>I think the current state of CF could be drastically
>improved.

I might disagree with "drastically", but I'm with you that things could be improved.

>Firstly, there's the cabal situation. I'm not satisfied with
>the staff's answer of "Well we're at where were at. Nothings
>changing. But we're talking." What does that mean? Especially
>when Scarab and Entropy are two cluster####s of cabals.

If you don't like Entropy & Scarab then just...don't play them? Or are you saying they make the game less enjoyable for you simply by existing, even if you're not playing one? For me, at least, I'm not sure "more cabal options" would really improve my experience.

>Final thing about cabals, it seems like we've made cabals more
>difficult in general. Now its three mage kills before you can
>become a berserker. Or 100 hours at least before you get
>Maran. Let's not put such standardization into a freeflowing
>game. If you're a hotshot badass squire who's kicking ass and
>taking names...Maran your ass at 50 hours.

Is there a hard 100 hour requirement for Maran? Honest question; I don't set rules like that, so it's a Korsgaard thing. If I had to guess, I'd wager that the hour requirement is somewhat negotiable if you 1. have a ton of EPKs and 2. rank up to level 40. But I can't speak for Kors.

>Secondly, I feel as if there are a few glaring imbalances in
>the game. I've been on my soapbox for a while about this, and
>I understand that there are steps you can take to mitigate the
>effectiveness, but someone has got to take a serious look at
>champions, and in particular storm champions.

I'm all for nerfing things that need to be nerfed. I haven't faced enough champions to say definitively they should be nerfed, but enough people are convinced they do that it's probably worth looking into.

>Furthermore, the ranking disparity between good and evil.

Ranking as a good is easier, but I'm not sure evils have it so bad. Certainly doesn't seem to throw people off playing evils.

Disclaimer: I am a relatively new player and would call myself optamistically average when it comes to pk. The following is entirely my opinion and may be miles off base.

My personal frustration with the two mentioned cabals is there is quite often a choice you have to make on creating certain character builds: will I be involved in cabal wars to a meaningful degree or will I be in one of these cabals. The elite of the elite are excluded from this, and if this is by design that's fine and the rest of this post can safely be ignored.

Take entropy, for instance. Most of the classes can just go outlander and for better or worse have superior powers, a reasonable expectation of allies in a pinch (be that for pk, exploration, whatever) and good back and forth between cabals. You will be lucky to get one of these things in Entropy, which for me at least kills any real enthusiasm I have upon starting up a character. I personally like soloing better but after 200 hours not so much, and I doubt I'm alone in that. I don't actually know how this can be fixed for entropy because the powers are so devisive. Some people like them, but most people don't and this is a case where majority opinion matters in most cases.

Second disclaimer: Scarab is my favourite cabal. That said I think if this had members it'd work just fine. It has great powers, a strong identity and a reason to be hated by everyone. It just doesn't have people in it and therefore is meaningless in the scope of the CF world. People complain about Maran reqs but you'll probably have to do equivalent or more to get into Scarab, which just isn't conducive to having an active cabal with the current population. The process also isn't particularly transparent (probably by design), which most likely just makes people feel like they're stuck.

Tldr: Cabals don't matter unless people join them. I'm not sure much more can be done regarding Entropy without coder help, which we've been told is off the cards currently. I think Scarab won't be relevant sans elite players without reducing how hard it is to get in, but that might not be a direction that is wanted either.

(Also #justiceforchaoticconjurers).)

...I can't change or fix. Some of these, I am sure you believe strongly, but are quite subjective.

I will tell you that evils outnumber goodies almost 2:1, and that's a consistent trend. So I'm not sure they need any more encouragement. I've played more evils than goodies, and I've never felt like I had a really tough time ranking. Eil Shaeria and Maethien have their own risks, with tough aggressive mobs that can wander and norecall. But those mechanics aside, going good is often a much tougher road to hoe overall than going evil due to roleplay restrictions and other mechanics. I'd be fine even if ranking them was incredibly easy.

Re "hammer dropping," we generally aren't as public about it now as previous generations have been with creative global echoes about blowing people up, etc. But rest assured that hammers are dropped, some IC and some OOC. As someone who regularly snoops and monitors characters in several ways, I don't think this is as bad as you say it is.

Re Scarab, as I said, there is not a single IMM devoted to watching the cabal aside from Scarab right now, but some people are able to induct real standouts. I went through the list of applicants recently, and there are a handful who seem to be the quiet killer types. That's fine, but it's not going to get them inducted in a hurry because that style makes them easy to miss. You kind of need to be a squeaky wheel if you want a Scarabcabal induction. Pray, roleplay often with other characters, etc.

Finally, I'll tell you that these essays don't really help.

There's plenty I'd love to change, and plenty I'd love to do, and plenty I can't. I'm saying this with no bitterness and no condescension: I get that you feel like you're opening our eyes, or pointing out things that none of us "get" or have thought of, etc.

Every single one of us wants to make CF more fun and more interesting. We all have gripes about one thing or another, and each of us could write a 40-page critique of cabals, balance, etc. Changing it, however, is another matter entirely.

I do what I can with interactions, quests, etc. The last few months have been far crazier and less predictable than expected. However, at the end of this month, my work schedule changes so that I should have more time to begin running regular, calendared global quests again. That's what I can do, so I'll be doing it.

If you, or anyone else, wants to have some actual dialog, shoot me or some other IMM an email at (immname)@carrionfields.com. I believe you when you say you're not trying to start a mudslinging contest, but that is always what posts like this do.

CF's the best and yall are great for all the work and tending to it


main issue i think is cabals and cabal wars - the structure and scope of it just no longer supports the numbers of the playerbase, all the way from inducts, requirements, to raiding and retrieving

i've had Ragers that ranked 20-51 and hero'd before there was a mage even in range. that's 40 hours without a cabal target to even engage with

This hits on most of my views on it.

But to make things more clear in case we aren't being blunt enough: the vast majority of imms have no actual ability to 'change things'. Be it altering a mob's balance (the recent guard thread), adding/removing a cabal, etc. That is limited to imps/coders - which we are low on, and they are often busy, particularly since they're stuck with the unpleasant burden of general MUD upkeep (I don't envy them).

So for the majority of us, like Rahs said, we focus on what we can do. Interactions, quests, funstuff, etc. Even imms sometimes talk about what they'd like changed - but seeing it done is something else entirely.

I almost tossed in the exact % of evils in the MUD, but maybe I'll use that for a fun trivia question soon'ish :).

Aside from that minor clarification, everything Rahs said pretty much hits home to me. Emails are always good.

-Ish

That's fair. And I appreciate both you and Ish's response.

Also, I don't necessarily think that my way is the 'right' way or anything else. I was mainly just hoping to open up the floor for a discussion to see if these are things that only I view as being off, or if these views are shared.

But ultimately, since it sounds like in a lot of aspects your hands are tied, that conversation likely doesn't need to happen. In retrospect, my post may have come across as more bitchy than it needed to, for that you have my apologies.

I stand by all the points I raised in my post, I was just looking for a discourse about it.

All the IMMs that can change stuff are burnt out, all the new IMMs are getting there because of constantly seeing posts like this, and all the other IMMs got run off a while ago.

We kinda made our own bed here.

The first change has to come from within the player base itself I'm pretty sure.

But, if in fact the IMMs who can maintain the playerbase or code needed changes, etc are burned-out or not interested anymore or do not have the time anymore....

The solution is new IMMs that can/are willing to perform in the environment that currently exists.

Player base is too small and too toxic. It peaks at 28 people on average. So why put in the effort. If they do something, somebody will rage... Then more people will rage cause its going to be completely out of balance.

Writing and balancing systems in a game with just hard core elite players is near impossible...

I don't think its burn out, its just too fricken hard to bring something new in. The game is horribly out of whack and thats hard to reign back in.

They maintain the game so people can play and I give them props for that... Its not easy herding cats and they've done a good job so far.

If you get bored play something new...

Play something that isn't the top dog pk machine...

Or try playing a helpful character for once...

First, notice the title of my post. "I don't know if that's true".

Then my opening statement "IF" IMMs 1) burned-out 2) Lost interest 3) don't have time, THEN the solution is....

All the garbage in your post has nothing to do with my IF/THEN statement that I don't even acknowledge is TRUE.

As far as playing helpful characters, that's all I play. If you have specific examples of my non-helpful characters, feel free to call me out with specific examples. Thanks.

You could put a lot of balance back into the game by removing most preps other than mage aura and mage shield, flight, enlarge and reduce.

And then make at least some weapons really hard to dodge no matter who is wielding them.