Physical effect: 'plague' modifies strength by -15 for 119 hours.
Skill: 'chill touch' modifies strength by -2 for 7 hours.
Song: 'cacophonous clamor' for 7 hours.
Song: 'languid carol' modifies strength by -9 for 6 hours.

How about maledictions be scaled as % of max strength instead of like this? And if that would be unwelcomed, how about making the duration a bit less of an exponential increase? Puhlease?!

ie Hi! I am a weak race, Oh.. I a !#@#!@ed.

Do you know how easy to cure plague? Look around and you'll find a couple of things that can cure it easily.

I was hoping someone else'd respond to this rather than it being me frequently raining on your parade, but it seems it's not to be.

In short, these maledictions are pretty well balanced as-is and I feel that changes as you suggest would make them less rather than more balanced. Someday, if you keep playing and try a variety of character types to get a stronger sense of perspective, I believe you'll come to realize that.

>I was hoping someone else'd respond to this rather than it
>being me frequently raining on your parade, but it seems it's
>not to be.
>
>In short, these maledictions are pretty well balanced as-is
>and I feel that changes as you suggest would make them less
>rather than more balanced. Someday, if you keep playing and
>try a variety of character types to get a stronger sense of
>perspective, I believe you'll come to realize that.

Well considering a player can get a string of PK deaths, with the requisite full looting.. to expect them to have the curatives or gold necessary to combat such maledictions ain't gonna happen. Even the player who did that to me in game thought it was a tad over the top. Go figure, huh? A player who wants the thrill of PK without killing the enjoyment of the game for his target?! Wow! Oh and Druid spores blow chunks too! 120+ hours in game. Hey there goes 20 minutes of potential, probably less but felt like twenty, waiting for it to wear off! Cackle!

Kinda funny actually. Your parade, your rain. CF is facing the same issues now that games it spawned have faced. And yet lessons learned are ignored because, in the past, CF was the game in town. Three way throw down ensues!

Riftshadow:
1) Bizarre as this may seem, much much more newbie friendly than CF or Avendar. Had a neat little companion program giving you a non-combatant friend who would show you around by giving directions.
2) Innovation slowly building for moving beyond purely PK based function.
3) Neat universal set of secondary skills that had to be hunted down and learned.
4) Fairly tight world with respect to movement.
5) Worst levels of cheating. Worst permagrouping. Worst level of unenforced RP. Hence it died.

Avendar:
1) Cabals fairly balanced. Cabal "items" useful to non caballed players, and cabal powers not overpowering to non cabal characters. Best cabal mechanic of the three discussed in this post.
2) Atmosphere: most robust area development, a single overlying creation story tying everything together( from classes to skills to areas).
3) Roleplaying functionality lightyears beyond CF or RS: emotes, pmotes, smotes, mandatory backgrounds, demanding description requirements. Imm driven storylines without Imm forced character play.
4) Movement format and area placement the best of the three.
5) Seperation of church and state. More Imm involvement behind the scenes and less direct Imm presence.
6) Carrot approach to a reward system for roleplaying allowing creation of accounts with a tree of neat character tweaks to be earned.
7) Stifling Imm intolerance and strong Imm "influence" with respect certain players. ;) Probably comes from a lack of available Immortals and extremely low playerbase. Imm arrogance beyond words with respect to issues: my baby is the MOST beautiful. Hence it is dying.

CF:
1) Most Imms. Excellent foundation for Cabal based Gods. Imms fairplay across the board, legendary.
2) Functionality of in game mechanics based on high playerbase levels, not uniform throughout class/race combinations but demands that evil be the driving force in game.
3) Racial vulnerabilities that are over the top.
4) Skills/Supps/Spells that maledict over the top.
5) Game function as PK engine excels beyond the above two but sadly forces specific race/class to be dropped due to "issues". Reminds me of a God Wars format at times.
6) Cabal powers over the top. Cabal mechanic stale.
7) Taken individually some of the best class skill trees to explore; taken as a whole, some of the worst throwback classes and uninspired classes. Huge imbalances.
8) Nicest character creation.

None of these three have actually come up with a decent way to deal with level sitters, use of immunity via levels in cabal wars, skill spammers, gear dependency, OOC knowledge use. With "over the top" maledictions comes the need for "over the top" counter measures etc etc a nasty infinite power spiral for all three games. Only RS had a warrior class that was robust enough to attempt to function without having to learn about all the counter measures available(but their insane Village equivalent was a foil to that). Another reason why RS was newbie friendly, at least at low levels.

Best home town of the three games: Cimar RS.
Most areas, biggest world, most well developed autoquests: Thera CF.
Best storyline and foundation development: Avendar.

None of these three games have truly found the balance needed to survive into the future. Each has a sort of a jack of all trades approach with specializations chosen by the Immstaff. Each has things to offer, especially to one another, but each staunchly bad mouths(ed) the others and resolutely ignores valuable lessons available.

I am giggling away at the vitriol you and yours spew whenever someone challenges you to look beyond CF for inspiration or even to be introspective. If CF can inspire other games, CF should not be so insular as to ignore what it has brought about. Imitation, flattery, etc.

Love the new things such as the economic skills. Miss some old things but they require a larger average playerbase.

CF is cool for a while as a player coming from a roleplaying background but the forced PK wears you out and down. Like I posted in reply to Gumbldink's deletion, I loved some of the oldschool stuff. Area revamps are great too, Voralian City is amazing, great leveling place, and some neat exotics! Love exotics. ;)

Oh well, school calls, I am out. :)

Yyuffi, Pmenoa, Ionna, Jaemesun (was in a very goofy mood and wore all the spider gear from the woman south of Galadon), Haelstrom, the minotaur who wanted to be good etc. I find evil is boring, and as the necessary foil for gameplay, way too boring.

Lots of RP based characters which were no longer feasible to play as I leveled them. Definately learned that Int is huge for an Elven warrior. Each character of mine had a description, role and founding concept. Best way to go, in my opinion.

Oh and for new players: Storm warriors. ;) You have your own little world to play in, damage resistance, and usually a cadre of support people who want a Storm meat shield.

I'll be todays bullet catcher.

>Well considering a player can get a string of PK deaths, with
>the requisite full looting..

A character can also -not- die, strange as that may seem.

>to expect them to have the
>curatives or gold necessary to combat such maledictions ain't
>gonna happen.

You use a bank during the good times and store it away for the bad times.
You could understand that you aren't in good shape to survive a fight with a necromancer or whoever else plagues and therefore take advantage of the FREE escape preparations such as teleport and basically just outright AVOID YOUR ENEMY if you stand no chance of success.

>Even the player who did that to me in game
>thought it was a tad over the top. Go figure, huh? A player
>who wants the thrill of PK without killing the enjoyment of
>the game for his target?!

There are free cure disease preps, but yes, 100 hours is a long time. Would you rather just be slain instead?

>Wow! Oh and Druid spores blow chunks
>too! 120+ hours in game. Hey there goes 20 minutes of
>potential, probably less but felt like twenty, waiting for it
>to wear off! Cackle!

Heh, or you could have it wear off in 2 minutes, your choice. Except you have to do more than sit still...

>Kinda funny actually. Your parade, your rain. CF is facing
>the same issues now that games it spawned have faced. And yet
>lessons learned are ignored because, in the past, CF was the
>game in town. Three way throw down ensues!

It seems that from here on in we now begin to test out that "million monkeys typing" idea.

>CF:
>2) Functionality of in game mechanics based on high playerbase
>levels, not uniform throughout class/race combinations but
>demands that evil be the driving force in game.

What?
A: Make sense
B: Identify the steps you've used to reach your conclusion.

>3) Racial vulnerabilities that are over the top.

What? How?

>4) Skills/Supps/Spells that maledict over the top.

Yeah, it's terrible being able to maledict.
It's even worse that the imms have coded ways to cure them.

>5) Game function as PK engine excels beyond the above two but
>sadly forces specific race/class to be dropped due to
>"issues". Reminds me of a God Wars format at times.

You're scared of a challenge?

>7) Taken individually some of the best class skill trees to
>explore; taken as a whole, some of the worst throwback classes
>and uninspired classes. Huge imbalances.

Specifics would be helpful here.

>None of these three have actually come up with a decent way to
>deal with level sitters,

You mean like distention? And what exactly is wrong with being a particular level?

>use of immunity via levels in cabal wars,

Uh?

> skill spammers,

Uhm, they've done a bucket-load against that. What do you think i keep whining about?

>gear dependency, OOC knowledge use.

hahahahahahahahahaahahahahah. Seriously, welcome to the reality.

>With "over the top" maledictions comes the need for "over the
>top" counter measures etc etc a nasty infinite power spiral
>for all three games.

Again, specifics, what's the over the top counter measure to that malediction, you've just been complaining that you had to wait it out. Doesn't sound overpowered to me.

>Only RS had a warrior class that was
>robust enough to attempt to function without having to learn
>about all the counter measures available(but their insane
>Village equivalent was a foil to that). Another reason why RS
>was newbie friendly, at least at low levels.

You mean, idiot proof?

>None of these three games have truly found the balance needed
>to survive into the future. Each has a sort of a jack of all
>trades approach with specializations chosen by the Immstaff.
>Each has things to offer, especially to one another, but each
>staunchly bad mouths(ed) the others and resolutely ignores
>valuable lessons available.

I don't actually here them mention "the others" in any shape or form.

>I am giggling away at the vitriol you and yours spew whenever
>someone challenges you to look beyond CF for inspiration or
>even to be introspective.

Was that what you were doing? I thought you were just whining about plague.

I don't actually hear them mention "the others" in any shape or form.

No matter how apt the comparison, I think we do a good job of avoiding the discussion of other games, even when they're waved in our face, as they are in this thread. I've discussed business models (pay-for-perks vs. free, subscription vs. free, MMORPG vs. MUD), but I think I'm pretty careful about sticking to general topics that apply to many games. (Even though I feel strongly that our business model is an oft-overlooked and critically important strength of CF.)

If someone can point to a recent counterexample, I'm all ears.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I do kind of think I remember you making fun of having a lever to pull in the academy that generates mobs, practically intended to make botting easy.

True, though at the time representatives of that particular SUD were advertising on our website and through various other CF-related channels.

The fact that you have to go back to 2001 to point out a fairly tame jab tells me we're probably playing nice. :)

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

In that post I pretty much summed up all the issues with CF I have encountered and posted about. Playerbase decline leading to in game inbalances due to skills/spells/supp that were all designed based on the game having a large group of players. Overkill was the major draw to CF when there was enough players to hunt down and kill that sucker with the +200 +200 axe of doom. Way to go Nexus guys! Had to triple team that AP but they did it.

The plague strength being a symbol or symptom of larger things I have mentioned before. Since now there are fewer players to help you overcome such things it means more character deaths for each player.

Currently CF has a playerbase that not only pendulums on a monthly basis with respect to guilds but on a daily basis because there are reduced numbers. I find that cabal mates tend to fixate on times of mutual availability. Can not blame them, it is boring being the hare all the time or simply to have to try to level alone.

The post about the plague is indicative of a larger problem CF is facing: how to get new and old players back into the game without the current level of imbalances driving them off. Catch 22. Need players to alleviate the skills/supp/spell sets designed for larger PB but frustration at dealing with them while the PB tries to grow is hard on players.

The fact that the player who gave that plague to my character thought it was a tad nuts was telling, in my mind as well. Hey! You, spored guy, go sit in a dark cold dank room somewhere. Now wait a minute, you expecting players without months of exposure to the game to know that?

Economy. New players and some olders player, pre-econimic changes, are not going to like the way the game feels. Get gold and throw it in the bank? Now wait a minute, until I got a method to get to a rather demented amount of available gold via a contact that was just nuts. And hey, what if you are playing an Outlander? Or hey, what if you are new and have no avenue to a ton of gold?

The fact I was on my way to the bank to get money to buy potions and the like when I got smacked by that plague bit. IC Pmenoa mentioned several times that he hated having a bucket load of ready coin because it seemed to coincide with him dying. Maybe true, maybe not, but in my character's mind it was. As a player I found gold whoring boring and really a waste of time that could be spent exploring or preferably roleplaying.

A lower than normal playerbase on a game written for a larger one is going to have a lot issues that just won't go away with increased advertising. Some things have to be revisited, revised, or otherwise addressed. And sometimes, if you are brave enough to look to others, you can find solutions.

There are code snippets out there for all sorts of great in game things. Languages, emotes, trade, crafting, etc. And some other games have them, or have adopted them. I love exdesc from both Arm and Avendar. Look at a character and see a keyword in a desc, armband.

Look Evil Genius

You say a strange upright being of the canine species. It's eyes glimmer with a dark cunning intellect. Upon its left arm is an band of metal, if only you could get close you may be able to make something out of it.

look armband Evil Genius

"This armband is made of beaten copper with strange runic symbols running along the outer edges in twin lines. Between are the symbols for Coyote, Roadrunner, and a strange little yellow bird."

Things like this help overcome issues of PK imbalance due to all the aforementioned reasons. Some games let you buy houses, one room, always open houses with spartan furnishings and NO special room properties. And would it not be cool to switch to Elvish or Dwarvish while speaking to those of your same race? Oops.. hey look we inadvertently opened up a skill of linguist for .. thieves, assassins, somebody!

CF has a powerful PK based code to drive gameplay via Evil's rising. Yep I do realize that the game is Carrion Fields. :) Hence the strength of the prestige classes: Mummy, Necromancer, and Vampire. CF could use a fair bit of offsetting roleplay code to make those days of drudgery as you log on alone in your character's "inclinations".

I like roleplaying a lot, as you may be able to tell, but CF has some issues that really makes it hard to immerse yourself within the game.
And new players who get caught up in the PK based code tend to go off on tangents and collect those shines, why? Because it is one of the best ways to survive, out gear your opponent and pray you stumble upon the right combination of spells/skills/supps to fell them. Now if they could simply go wander off and do some roleplaying, that would be cool too, no??

You: Hey Fred, I'll be out of action for about 120 hours because of these spores.

Fred: Why don't you try... (insert the answer).


It's pretty simple really. If you run into a problem in game, try asking someone friendly how to deal with it.

>In that post I pretty much summed up all the issues with CF I
>have encountered and posted about. Playerbase decline leading
>to in game inbalances due to skills/spells/supp that were all
>designed based on the game having a large group of players.
>Overkill was the major draw to CF when there was enough
>players to hunt down and kill that sucker with the +200 +200
>axe of doom. Way to go Nexus guys! Had to triple team that AP
>but they did it.

If that were true then he couldn't build the +200 +200 axe, now could he.

>The plague strength being a symbol or symptom of larger things
>I have mentioned before. Since now there are fewer players to
>help you overcome such things it means more character deaths
>for each player.

Are you under some form of impression that plague is new and hasn't been around for about 8+ years at least and hasn't been faced by 1,000's of characters? It's irrelevant to the number of others characters logged in, 1,000's of others have managed to survive, solo.
Others have died.

>The post about the plague is indicative of a larger problem CF
>is facing: how to get new and old players back into the game
>without the current level of imbalances driving them off.
>Catch 22. Need players to alleviate the skills/supp/spell sets
>designed for larger PB but frustration at dealing with them
>while the PB tries to grow is hard on players.

Plague is not new.
Players do not need -anyone- else to assist them to survive it.


>The fact that the player who gave that plague to my character
>thought it was a tad nuts was telling, in my mind as well.
>Hey! You, spored guy, go sit in a dark cold dank room
>somewhere. Now wait a minute, you expecting players without
>months of exposure to the game to know that?

You're talking to me and i think you're nuts. Must mean it's true.

>Economy. New players and some olders player, pre-econimic
>changes, are not going to like the way the game feels. Get
>gold and throw it in the bank? Now wait a minute, until I got
>a method to get to a rather demented amount of available gold
>via a contact that was just nuts. And hey, what if you are
>playing an Outlander? Or hey, what if you are new and have no
>avenue to a ton of gold?

You've lost me here. You are saying that you cannot gather gold enough to keep any aside at all? Then i think you are a stage before complaining about being pk'ed. Stick to sub rank 11 for a while is my advice.


>The fact I was on my way to the bank to get money to buy
>potions and the like when I got smacked by that plague bit. IC
>Pmenoa mentioned several times that he hated having a bucket
>load of ready coin because it seemed to coincide with him
>dying. Maybe true, maybe not, but in my character's mind it
>was. As a player I found gold whoring boring and really a
>waste of time that could be spent exploring or preferably
>roleplaying.

Why don't you learn to avoid people? It's not as if the imms random plague you.

>A lower than normal playerbase on a game written for a larger
>one is going to have a lot issues that just won't go away with
>increased advertising. Some things have to be revisited,
>revised, or otherwise addressed. And sometimes, if you are
>brave enough to look to others, you can find solutions.

Ok solutions to what issues? Plague is your only issue or just the general fact that you can't handle pk, or avoidance thereof?

>There are code snippets out there for all sorts of great in
>game things. Languages, emotes, trade, crafting, etc. And some
>other games have them, or have adopted them. I love exdesc
>from both Arm and Avendar. Look at a character and see a
>keyword in a desc, armband.

Wait, that's a nice feature - are you trying to claim that the imms are somehow against this, or are you trying to claim that somehow this command counterbalances plague?

>Things like this help overcome issues of PK imbalance due to
>all the aforementioned reasons. Some games let you buy houses,
>one room, always open houses with spartan furnishings and NO
>special room properties. And would it not be cool to switch
>to Elvish or Dwarvish while speaking to those of your same
>race? Oops.. hey look we inadvertently opened up a skill of
>linguist for .. thieves, assassins, somebody!

Wait, being able to buy houses counterbalances plague.
DESPITE THE FACT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO HEAL PLAGUE YOU THINK YOU CAN AFFORD TO BUY A HOUSE??!?!?!
WTF?
And really, what the hell point is a spartan room?

>CF has a powerful PK based code to drive gameplay via Evil's
>rising.

I asked you to clarify this already, you haven't. PK attempts to keep good and evil on a balance or are you thinking that goodies should fight each other. As an aside, CF has moved away from good vs evil to other divisions.

..are typically cured by resting in cold or hot place where these lifeforms cannot survive. Their health/mana-draining capabilities are not affecting you in these enviroments. Also, the resting will take a much shorter time than the timer for these communes. Thus, 120 hour spores is a bad example, since the character does not have to wait that long.

Do me a favor, e-mail me at xancaronis@yahoo.com. I'd like to chat with you about CF and RS and the copmarisons sometimes from one former RS player to another.

>>I was hoping someone else'd respond to this rather than it
>>being me frequently raining on your parade, but it seems
>it's
>>not to be.
>>
>>In short, these maledictions are pretty well balanced as-is
>>and I feel that changes as you suggest would make them less
>>rather than more balanced. Someday, if you keep playing and
>>try a variety of character types to get a stronger sense of
>>perspective, I believe you'll come to realize that.
>
>Well considering a player can get a string of PK deaths, with
>the requisite full looting.. to expect them to have the
>curatives or gold necessary to combat such maledictions ain't
>gonna happen.

After you are more experienced you will realize this is ridiculously easy. Play a character with some form of identify besides lore and you can find out item's worth then merely use barter to heal disease.

>Even the player who did that to me in game
>thought it was a tad over the top. Go figure, huh? A player
>who wants the thrill of PK without killing the enjoyment of
>the game for his target?! Wow! Oh and Druid spores blow chunks
>too! 120+ hours in game. Hey there goes 20 minutes of
>potential, probably less but felt like twenty, waiting for it
>to wear off! Cackle!

The helpfile for spores/thornheart reveals ways to get rid of them quite quickly. This is another thing that you're complaining about when you don't :

A) Know how it works from experience.
B) Realize from the perspective of the other class how widely known the cures for this is.

Until you either learn A or B you're going to think its overpowered. But you only think that because you don't know any better.

>
>Kinda funny actually. Your parade, your rain. CF is facing
>the same issues now that games it spawned have faced. And yet
>lessons learned are ignored because, in the past, CF was the
>game in town. Three way throw down ensues!

The 'lessons' are ignored because the person 'teaching' them is ignorant about the game. I don't mean to say that to be a jerk, that's really just the only way to describe you. You don't know how easy it is to cure maledictions or spores. I just got off playing a shaman into hero range and I'll tell you that I landed a lot of kills but it wasn't plague that was doing it and thats because everyone and their cousin learns how to cure plague easily within the first few months of playing and you should work towards that rather than complaining.

>
>Riftshadow:
>1) Bizarre as this may seem, much much more newbie friendly
>than CF or Avendar. Had a neat little companion program giving
>you a non-combatant friend who would show you around by giving
>directions.
>2) Innovation slowly building for moving beyond purely PK
>based function.
>3) Neat universal set of secondary skills that had to be
>hunted down and learned.
>4) Fairly tight world with respect to movement.
>5) Worst levels of cheating. Worst permagrouping. Worst level
>of unenforced RP. Hence it died.

Listen, not for nothing but I didn't like Riftshadow. If I did, I'd probably have played it more than two weeks. But I didn't. So I don't really know why I'd be in favor of making CF more like Riftshadow.


>Avendar:
>1) Cabals fairly balanced. Cabal "items" useful to non
>caballed players, and cabal powers not overpowering to non
>cabal characters. Best cabal mechanic of the three discussed
>in this post.
>2) Atmosphere: most robust area development, a single
>overlying creation story tying everything together( from
>classes to skills to areas).
>3) Roleplaying functionality lightyears beyond CF or RS:
>emotes, pmotes, smotes, mandatory backgrounds, demanding
>description requirements. Imm driven storylines without Imm
>forced character play.
>4) Movement format and area placement the best of the three.
>5) Seperation of church and state. More Imm involvement behind
>the scenes and less direct Imm presence.
>6) Carrot approach to a reward system for roleplaying allowing
>creation of accounts with a tree of neat character tweaks to
>be earned.
>7) Stifling Imm intolerance and strong Imm "influence" with
>respect certain players. ;) Probably comes from a lack of
>available Immortals and extremely low playerbase. Imm
>arrogance beyond words with respect to issues: my baby is the
>MOST beautiful. Hence it is dying.

Avendar sucks. I'm not sure why I'd want any tips from this game. It sucks, so why would I want my favorite game to turn into it?

>
>CF:
>1) Most Imms. Excellent foundation for Cabal based Gods. Imms
>fairplay across the board, legendary.

Yay.

>2) Functionality of in game mechanics based on high playerbase
>levels, not uniform throughout class/race combinations but
>demands that evil be the driving force in game.

This is drivel. Really it is. Do you analyze stocks? Well, I don't. I've only been messing with them for about a year, so I don't qualify myself to analyze them. You are not good enough at CF to analyze these things. Even seasoned veterans misinterpret things. I'm telling you right now that you're offbase however.

>3) Racial vulnerabilities that are over the top.

We don't want CF to be elf-land. We want races besides human to reflect their rarity with penalties. As it stands I feel duergars are too represented compared to other races, same for storm and cloud giants.

>4) Skills/Supps/Spells that maledict over the top.

Again, you're not really good enough at the game to make these sorts of assertions. You aren't. Accept it and maybe you can start to get better rather than saying the same things over and over that ARE JUST PLAIN WRONG. How many shamans, druids, assassins, etc have you had? I recall a few elf warriors. You're going to tell people who have balanced this game out for something like 10 years that they don't know what they're talking about from your vast experience from a stint a few years back and 3 elf warriors and a paladin. Come on.

>5) Game function as PK engine excels beyond the above two but
>sadly forces specific race/class to be dropped due to
>"issues". Reminds me of a God Wars format at times.

No, the RP wants there to not be 900 elves and 15 humans. Its how they want things and its how most of us like things. We'd like elves to be somewhat more rare than humans. Though again, I think some races are still too common due to bonuses which in my opinion are slightly too good (detect hidden, for example).

>6) Cabal powers over the top. Cabal mechanic stale.

I don't care for some cabal layouts but I wouldn't say this applies to most cabals and its mostly just a preference/annoyance of mine. Something that slightly, very slightly, peeves me. And only because of the types of players it attracts many of whom don't RP their penalties except when heavy-handedly forced. Regardless, this is a major, major exaggeration on your part.

>7) Taken individually some of the best class skill trees to
>explore; taken as a whole, some of the worst throwback classes
>and uninspired classes. Huge imbalances.

Unlike you I've played every class to 200 hours or so besides like 2 or 3 and I've disagreed. My beef with some classes like AP is that they are frustrating, not that they are imbalanced. CF is quite finely tuned. I've never had a class that didn't have pros and cons that about weighed out evenly.

>8) Nicest character creation.

Well, that's good. I'd like to be able to just pick your stats, rolling seems like wasted time/bandwidth.

>None of these three have actually come up with a decent way to
>deal with level sitters, use of immunity via levels in cabal
>wars, skill spammers, gear dependency, OOC knowledge use.

CF is a game. I'd be pissed off if the imms told me I had to rank because then it'd feel like a job. This is your cabal leader's job, not something that should be hard coded. Skill spamming is a stupid waste of time except for invokers and assassins. I got over 50 pks with my last char before I even got parry over 80% so don't tell me its vital.

>With "over the top" maledictions comes the need for "over the
>top" counter measures etc etc a nasty infinite power spiral
>for all three games. Only RS had a warrior class that was
>robust enough to attempt to function without having to learn
>about all the counter measures available(but their insane
>Village equivalent was a foil to that). Another reason why RS
>was newbie friendly, at least at low levels.

Warriors are already arguably the 'best' overall class in CF. Probably not the 'best' but pretty damn close.

>
>Best home town of the three games: Cimar RS.
>Most areas, biggest world, most well developed autoquests:
>Thera CF.
>Best storyline and foundation development: Avendar.

Oddly enough, RS is out of business and Avendar is on its way. CF has a slight lull, but we're not going anywhere. That says a lot about your summary.

>
>None of these three games have truly found the balance needed
>to survive into the future. Each has a sort of a jack of all
>trades approach with specializations chosen by the Immstaff.
>Each has things to offer, especially to one another, but each
>staunchly bad mouths(ed) the others and resolutely ignores
>valuable lessons available.

Muds are like disco, its just a matter of time. That being said, CF is about as good as it gets.

>
>I am giggling away at the vitriol you and yours spew whenever
>someone challenges you to look beyond CF for inspiration or
>even to be introspective. If CF can inspire other games, CF
>should not be so insular as to ignore what it has brought
>about. Imitation, flattery, etc.
>
>Love the new things such as the economic skills. Miss some old
>things but they require a larger average playerbase.
>
>CF is cool for a while as a player coming from a roleplaying
>background but the forced PK wears you out and down. Like I
>posted in reply to Gumbldink's deletion, I loved some of the
>oldschool stuff. Area revamps are great too, Voralian City is
>amazing, great leveling place, and some neat exotics! Love
>exotics. ;)
>
>Oh well, school calls, I am out. :)
>
>Yyuffi, Pmenoa, Ionna, Jaemesun (was in a very goofy mood and
>wore all the spider gear from the woman south of Galadon),
>Haelstrom, the minotaur who wanted to be good etc. I find evil
>is boring, and as the necessary foil for gameplay, way too
>boring.
>
>Lots of RP based characters which were no longer feasible to
>play as I leveled them. Definately learned that Int is huge
>for an Elven warrior. Each character of mine had a
>description, role and founding concept. Best way to go, in my
>opinion.
>
>Oh and for new players: Storm warriors. ;) You have your own
>little world to play in, damage resistance, and usually a
>cadre of support people who want a Storm meat shield.


I skipped most of this after you mocked Nepenthe. I'm sorry but the muds you envy so much suck, one of which is completely gone and the other will be soon enough. Honestly, you don't know enough to make critiques like this. Its like a cashier at Home Depot telling the CEO what products to sell and prices to give them. You're just out of your league on this.

Very nice read and replies. Newbies to semi-veterans should read this. Really helps you when you are at the breaking-point: to quit or not to quit.

Anyway, Psektos, the majority of the posts is not to flame you. We've been through what you have experienced, but we stuck it out as players giving constructive criticisms and feedback. Those who are even more dedicated join the Imm staff and spend a lot of their times to make CF a better game.

If you have that desire and drive, I'd suggest playing a couple more characters, some of which twice-thrice to hero, to get a good feel. Then ask to be an Immortal and go make the difference.

Go, yay!