2005 Deletions GANK-O-METER

Onahu 2.30
Vinson 2.74
Atelzor 1.75
Growlow 1.90
Urog 2.18
Trepeq 1.83

EMPIRE Total = 2.11

Aeleck 1.75
Sydrian 2.23
Ahelun 2.14
Iramath 2.11
Tiahan 2.86
Rual 2.15
Aroyang 1.24
Lariya 1.0
Shaquatana 1.70
Beladriend 3.0
Naref 1.65
Kelin 1.73
Shisi 1.95

FORTRESS Total = 1.96

Dupayne 1.03
Kimberly 1.58
Restraal 2.58
Granaak 2.15
Hylondin 1.94
Yakrov 1.75
Krollos 1.71

SCION Total = 1.82

Aesrira 1.76
Arisnus 1.61
Massie 1.43
Jaeiin 1.94
Tjok 1.60
Thays 1.92
Farniby 1.71
Norkibjorden 1.94
karrel 1.48
Ehlynn 1.32

OUTLANDER Total = 1.67

Huidnro 1.61
kocet 1.36
Khard 1.41
Alathin 1.35
Glaurthran 1.63
Jurt 1.27
Arrazn 1.50
Ackuol 1.73
Karashin 1.04

BATTLE Total = 1.43

Ironically more people complain about ragers gang banging.

Because they don't take in to account the number of kills per char. For instance, Onahu was involved in 23 kills and Urog in almost 400. You can't just average Onahu's 2.3 and Urog's 2.18, you have to give more weight to Urog's gank-o-meter. I also noticed you had Lariya in there, who I don't think has an accurate gank-o-meter because the character is too old. And people complain more about ragers ganging because they have limitations on when and how they're allowed to. No other cabals do.

all of these discussions on "who ganks and who doesn't" depend on an opening assumption that there is some sort of moral (or negative moral) value placed upon Ganking.

I dismiss that assumption.

In my opinion, according to Roleplay in the CF universe...I would say that in the vast majority of roles that people play, there is nothing wrong with ganking...to the point to say that in many roles that people play, Ganking is by far the more correct way to play the role (both on the good and evil side).


I think most people don't like ganging in one of two situations.

1) They are getting ganked and can't find enough friends to do it themselves.

2) They are under the impression that someone else's role shouldn't include ganking of any sort, so they are upset when they see it happening.


In the first case...that's your own fault, not the fault of the Ganker that just got you.

In the second, I can only think of a very few official paths in Cf that would require a "non-ganking" role. And each of those paths have ways where you can deal with it IN GAME (Ask a follower of Grurk how cute and cuddly their god is when they gang someone).

In either case, the constant (read: someone's complained about ganking out of the game at least once a week since the mud started) whining and complaining and endless discussion ad infinitum ad nauseum is just purposeless.


Scions? who cares if they gank? as much as I know of scion goals...I'd say ganking would be the preferred rp solution.

Empires? That's a no brainer.

Maran? who cares if they gank? as much as I know of maran goals...I'd say ganking would be the preferred rp solution.

Tribunal? Ditto.

Outlander? Ditto.

Ragers? Here's where most people have problems, being stuck in the ragers of 5 years ago.

My advice?

Always expect to be ganged. Especially by ragers.

That way, you are never dissapointed, and sometimes pleasantly surprised....you will live longer...and rest assured, if a pc isn't supposed to be ganging, and is consistently, he will get noticed and things will happen...

Without you going ooc and whining about it.

It's obviously something that figures into our design process, either directly (i.e., penalizing skills like Bash when used against outnumbered foes), or indirectly (i.e., shortening the time window of knockout). Ultimately, we want to offer a playing field where a single character is viable, but group-on-group conflict is also practical and fair.

That isn't to say we're going to take draconian steps (i.e. just make it so a second person can't engage), because there are times where being able to outnumber a powerful character keeps that character's power in check, and we don't want to shatter the IC/OOC wall with weird restrictions. If we artificially forced every fight to be one-on-one, that would sharply alter the balance of power in the direction of skilled players (and away from more group-oriented classes like bards, transmuters, and healers), especially if you consider how their tactics would change if the threat of being outnumbered was minimal or absent.

However, the Funstick obviously doesn't think much of a player who exclusively fights with insurmountable advantages (*). It's not much fun for them except in a petty, kicking-down-sandcastles kind of way, and it's not very fun for the outgunned victim. And since we're in the business of Fun, we've gradually been shading the game to disfavor that style of play.

I think most people don't like ganging in one of two situations.
1) They are getting ganked and can't find enough friends to do it themselves.

Or they don't find it fun to do so, because they prefer the more involved strategy of managing a close fight.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): Accounting for skill. If a newish player brings an ally to take down an enemy who has been whipping the tar out of them, they may be making the fight more fair (and interesting) than if they went solo and got sent packing in no time flat. Conversely, I don't think too highly of characters who exclusively gun for the weakest person they can find, avoiding all reasonable challenges, even if they're doing it one-on-one.

You know, like at all?

You have a gazillion ways of seeing which characters are prone to one on one fights and which are prone to group fighting. Why not let those that really want the one on one have something to make it happen, but which (a) can be used against them (force duel is both ways, either party can initiate) and (b) is not impossible to avoid.

I wouldn't give it out like candy, but I haven't seen anyone or heard of anyone with it in a very long time. Giving it out with some greater frequency (once, twice, to those that fit the bill, say in a month or every few months?) might help.

And yes, I'd love it myself, but that's not the point. :P

People deserving of a force duel echelon skill are generally not the people who are worried about gangs.

Ummm. Forceduel does alot more than allow you to have a one-on-one fight. It sort of, you know, prevents your opponent from getting away.

I think it pisses on the "realism" factor of the game. I think of it as something that belongs on a more hack n' slashy type of mud without and semblence of RP.

Slap a hidden meter on chars that feeds directly from their gank-o-meter. And make their skills work slightly better if they are on the right side of the gank-o-meter and slightly worse if they are on the wrong side. Of course the number would have to be on a sliding scale somewhat depending on class. And perhaps make the gank-o-meter unaffected in raid type situations.

Just a thought. Might be too hard to implement though or perhaps no one is interested. I think if something like this was implemented the gank factor would change in an extemely possitive manner.

This is the kind of artificial OOC tweaking that I don't want to do. See also my discussion on fair fights where I mention that numbers aren't always the way to judge them.

Also, we don't rely on those meters to be 100% accurate, for the reasons given elsewhere on the thread.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

But in the last two years, each of the few characters I have played has been able to avoid ganks nicely, even without detect hidden. Personally, I don't think nerfing (which seems to be the most common and perhaps seemingly easiest solution) is the answer to everything. Some things just don't need to be fixed, and trying to keep making the game more 'newbie-friendly' in my opinion is self-defeating.

Personally, although I don't play any other online games aside from CF, I think we all know the heyday of MUDs is long gone, replaced by graphical counterparts. I feel the immstaff should concentrate on making the game more fun for the veteran playerbase, not for the clueless newbie who can't avoid gangs as well as the rest of us.

Personally, although I don't play any other online games aside from CF, I think we all know the heyday of MUDs is long gone, replaced by graphical counterparts.

Like how TV made books obsolete?

Most larger games report a small decrease in playerbase over the last couple years. If you check ours (users playerbase), you'll see that we've held steady for about a year.

I feel the immstaff should concentrate on making the game more fun for the veteran playerbase, not for the clueless newbie who can't avoid gangs as well as the rest of us.

I disagree entirely.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

In my opinion, new players are the thing CF would most benefit from at the moment. Ideally, there should be no less than 15 people in your PK range at all levels. I choose 15, but really it might be 20. Basically, given the size that Thera is, there needs to be more people in order to find someone without spending hours trekking around to every out of the way spot.

But I'll have to disagree about the TV/books thing. Books aren't irrelevant, but they're certainly less popular (adjusting for literacy rates) since the advent of television. Eventually a mmporg will come along that offers the depth of a mud. So far that hasn't happened (to my knowledge).

Agreed. We need new players. And I like your number. Admittedly, I'm part of the problem, since I log off if there's no one to fight in my PK range.

>>I feel the immstaff should concentrate on making the game more fun for the veteran playerbase, not for the clueless newbie who can't avoid gangs as well as the rest of us.

>Like how TV made books obsolete?

TV is not to books as graphical muds are to text muds. I could draw a better analogy with the D&D dungeon master being replaced with the code behind CF. Now, I don't think whoever owns the D&D monniker at the moment is trying to attract new players either.

>Most larger games report a small decrease in playerbase over the last couple years. If you check ours (users playerbase), you'll see that we've held steady for about a year.

I would wager cf has seen at least a small decrease as well.

>I disagree entirely.

Obviously. But I still maintain it is in cf's best interest to appeal to the veteran base it has. Despite advertising, despite reviews, despite anything a non-profit like CF can offer, word of mouth is still going to be the #1 advertising venue. And nowadays, that's going to be word of mouth from CF vets telling their little brother, their roommates, etc. about CF. And if you start/keep implementing items that make the game more frustrating for them, this kind of positive press is less likely to happen.

I could draw a better analogy with the D&D dungeon master being replaced with the code behind CF.

According to this, D&D enjoyed record sales in 2004. Looking at their release schedule, they're very aggressively putting out new products.

Now, I don't think whoever owns the D&D monniker at the moment is trying to attract new players either.

Then why are they coming out with this product in April 2005?

Browse their website- Wizards of the Coast (the owner of the D&D trademark) is very clearly devoting a ton of content to people who are not only new to D&D, but don't really know what a roleplaying game is.

I would wager cf has seen at least a small decrease as well.

As I mentioned in my original post, users playersbase suggests that we've held steady for the last year, despite a large expansion in graphical MMORPGs. You're assuming that the number of players who leave CF to play MMORPGs is larger than the number of players who are introduced to the genre through MMORPGs and find CF through more detailed searching.

Plugging the raw data for the last 52 weeks into Excel, we've been gaining an average of ~2 pfiles/week during that time period. (Best fit: 1731.3 + 1.98t, t in weeks.) I expected the reverse, especially because we clean up storage characters more aggressively than we used to, but the number of pfiles went up a tiny bit regardless of that.

Pfile counts aren't the end-all-be-all of figuring out how many players we have, but they're the best hard numbers I have handy, and we make them public specifically to address the all-too-common doomsaying. If they were plummeting, you could log on and check them yourself.

Despite advertising, despite reviews, despite anything a non-profit like CF can offer, word of mouth is still going to be the #1 advertising venue.

Can you prove this? You're stating it very definitely, but I don't know if it's true. It might be. Grabbing players from other MUDs is at least as believable, however, especially if you listen to the newbie channel often. Your intuition might be that word of mouth is #1, but your intuition was wrong on several of the above points. We really don't know where the bulk of our new players are coming from.

In any case, after word of mouth happens, we have.... new players. And those new players, regardless of how much assistance they are getting from their 'connection' are undoubtedly helped by the kinds of projects we've been targeting them with- expanded Academy, easier buying/bartering, more IC maps, more shops, etc. And thus, we're going to keep going in that direction.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

We really don't know where the bulk of our new players are coming from.

You don't know? Then ask. How about a new forum poll that asks two things: Starting year and "how did you hear about CF"? This could give some statistics about where the players come from.

Put something in the new character rolling screen that says 'how did you hear about us' with some options (friend, mud connector, etc), and 'how long have you been playing' or something like that. Easy way to track who is doing what, as long as the typical cadre of CF jackasses don't F it up on purpose.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/46080/000104746905005891/a2152676z10-k.htm

An increase in units sold (our biggest year ever!!!) does not mean an equal increase in revenue, or even that a profit is being made, and that blurb on the WOTC site is vague at best (plus in my experience, companies will make it as hard as possible to find or understand negative info on their sites--you have to go to the SEC to find the 'real dea').

In any case, I really think that some sort of questionnaire during the char creation process would help you guys understand where characters are coming from.

I searched through that document and found minimal information about Dungeons and Dragons. I did see that their total domestic games sales are slightly down and that international games sales are slightly up, but Hasbro is an enormous company, with Dungeons and Dragons being a tiny piece of that pie. Is there something specific in there that you think disproves their website claim of record sales in 2004?

Regardless of how you finagle it (net, gross, units, profit, etc.), "record sales" is a sign of health. And the new product line (a brand new "Basic Game", "Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies", etc.) clearly shows that they are targeting people who are not only new to D&D, but new to the genre. How you can't concede those two points given the information presented is beyond me.

In any case, I really think that some sort of questionnaire during the char creation process would help you guys understand where characters are coming from.

If we could trust the data. It seems like something that could consume a lot of implementation/analysis resources, and end up giving us numbers we don't trust. CF is a (relatively) small community, and people with agendas can swing sampling quite far.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I think you're trying to make newbie-friendliness into an either-or thing, and it's not. It's a goal for us, but it's not the only goal for us and never will be.

Word of mouth is good, but the new players it brings aren't any help if they turn around and say 'This game is too tough / isn't fun' and never play again. I've introduced CF to a handful of players over the years, and sometimes gotten that reaction.

I think CF needed a turn to the more newbie friendly over the years. Too many times I would try to introduce someone to CF, and short of sitting there in the room with them for hours it was just too much of a pain in the ass to introduce someone new to CF, especially if they had never mudded before. I was fortunate in that way way way back in the beginning when I started, the RP standard was much lower and the person showing me the mud could go OOC to explain things to me as I was learning. Once the mud improved the quality of the roleplaying, it also became often times impossibly newbie unfriendly. Things have been done lately to change this, and I think the changes by and large have been positive ones.

I think we all know the heyday of MUDs is long gone, replaced by graphical counterparts.

I couldn't disagree more. Games like Everquest and World of Warcraft have, if anything, mainstreamed a genre that used to exclusively be the domain of geeks and hermits.

While still a geek at heart, I don't generally walk with the geeky crowd much anymore. I'm a wife, a mother, a citizen involved in a religious community, children's classes, and a Mommy-Club. In the company of these people I would NEVER in the past even MENTION my involvement with CF. I mean are you kidding? They would have looked at me like a mental case with a third eye if I had even *tried* to explain it.

Over the past several years the base of people to which I find I can mention my hobby has increased. Not that I talk about fire giants and dwarves with everyone I meet, but it comes up occasionally, whereas in the past, it would come up never. Another stay-at-home-mom will casually mention she plays Everquest with her husband. My husband's coworkers have taken up World of Warcraft en masse. Some of these people who would have found the idea of CF ludicrous 5 years ago, now find the idea of a free multiplayer roleplaying game interesting.

And as someone who plays MMORPGs myself, I have always come back to MUDding, a persistent interest for over 10 years, while I've yet to find an MMORPGs engaging for more than a few months. They are fun, and I enjoy them, I'm not MUD elitist, but they are a different kind of fun.

So, not only is the list of potential MUD players expanded beyond the domain of cloistered college boys, many MUD players who spend some time playing MMORPGs are not forever lost to MUDs either.

>While still a geek at heart, I don't generally walk with the
>geeky crowd much anymore. I'm a wife, a mother, a citizen
>involved in a religious community, children's classes, and a
>Mommy-Club. In the company of these people I would NEVER in
>the past even MENTION my involvement with CF. I mean are you
>kidding? They would have looked at me like a mental case with
>a third eye if I had even *tried* to explain it.

I understand this part completely. I, too, am involved actively in my religious activities and I am an influencer in that community too. The community find it hard to draw a line between hobby in medieval fantasy and being in total indulgence of a no-no fantasy game.

However, I've always stood my ground and come forth openly about my hobbies. And I agree that with more popular games that have exposed the masses like warcraft and kotor, we have begun to accept that they are just - games. It was a taboo in the past though.

I'm glad to have found someone with similar experiences. :)

I'd think including healers in your equation is problematic. If you throw out myself (Vinson) and Restraal the results for those cabals change dramatically. If you throw out Urog, who hasn't really been an active mortal for quite some time, Empire is actually 2nd to the Fortress.

But all of that is really irrelevant, since it's not the makeup of a cabal that makes it ganky, it's the demographics of the players playing characters in those cabals.

The MOST interesting statistic would be revealed if we knew who played each of the above characters and could follow those players over a period of time to see if their characters are routinely the most ganky.

But all of that is really irrelevant, since it's not the makeup of a cabal that makes it ganky, it's the demographics of the players playing characters in those cabals.

Two things:

1) Trying to draw conclusions based on a handful of characters over a couple months is pointless for anything except flamebaiting.

But all of that is really irrelevant, since it's not the makeup of a cabal that makes it ganky, it's the demographics of the players playing characters in those cabals.

2) Yup. The argument of "Cabal X is TEH GANGORS!!!" gets especially specious when you consider that the vast majority of players don't play only one cabal from character to character. (And some play characters in different cabals during the same time period.) The people that were (FORTRESS) one month can be next month's (or tomorrow's) (EMPIRE) and vice versa.

Digression:

In my opinion, one major perspective difference between the staff and the playerbase is the amount of time people give an issue before they feel a decision is needed. I look at stats like the ones posted and think "Big deal. 2 months of data. I'd bet in two months we'll see a brand new set of trends. These are probably market fluctuations." For example, when new thieves came out, there were immediate (as in, the same day the skills first saw action) cries of "X is over/underpowered!" and demands for action. Personally, I'm often happy to let something like that brew for about six months before forming a solid opinion- new things can look underpowered because no one is using them optimally, or overpowered because someone is using them optimally, but countertactics haven't evolved yet. If something's way out of line, it can be addressed in a shorter time frame (example: original nightgaunts), but most game trends don't fall into that category of urgency.

Staying on the thief theme, if thieves never had Blackjack and we suddenly introduced it in its current form, there would probably have been a huge outcry about just how deadly a short-term but highly reliable knockout skill which can be done from hiding with few practical countertactics is. Personally, I'm thrilled that knockout effects in general have come down in duration (and ganging utility), but I'm also keeping an eye on how they play out in practice for the foreseeable future. I definitely don't think we need to tweak them again in either direction for some time.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

People complain more about ragers because they have, arguably, the best cabal powers in game. That's why the restrictions on them are so great. The problem is that people who don't play the cabal don't understand that only a small subsect of the Battle cabal has to fight them one on one, and it doesn't count in raids or when someone is just that damn good that it takes two to take them down.

/doesn't play ragers