The way parts of CF is designed reminds me of classic project management in large corporations. You inject tollgates in projects to ensure that the project is on the right path

For example the imms don't want priests of their religion to be clueless so they set up a tollgate at the start of the character and then to ensure that it does not go awry later you have more tollgates to get the full extent of their powers. The advantage is that the character and cf confirms to how the IMM wants cf to be played. The disadvantage is of course that your character become reliant on that particular imm and that you need to invest hours to passing those tollgates.

In Thera you would assume that the Gods never sleep but that is not really the case in real life so if your times does not match or your IMM is taking an unannounced break from cf you can end up spending 40 hours of gaming time just waiting before you delete. 40 hours is quite a lot these days for a lot of players (more than some would invest in a bought AAA game).

I feel that CF has moved more and more towards putting content behind tollgates that needs immortal review of characters; cabal powers, edges and areas. And that system is just made for people falling through the cracks or limiting the way you play CF than a more sandbox world would.

I would love if CF went towards a more "Ask for forgiveness instead of permission" style sandbox.

That you could type "deity Baerinika" to automatically get empowered and become a follower of Baer because that is a role you want to play in CF. Instead of checking what imms seems to be active in your playtimes (for example European early evenings) by checking forums, wizlist and immortal comments on premium battlefield posts and then create a role if any imm seem to available. And if the IMM wants do an interview they could always call their followers their shrine at any time for a talk.

Or that more Cabals went towards an Empire approach to induction. That you would be inducted as an Applicant into Battle when you have 1 mage kill and when you have 10 you would become a full member (or if an officer promotes you). Same with Maran or you could have downing of enemy cabal items as a measurement or whatever. Instead of ending up in a situation where you are rolling a battle applicant but the commander plays when it is 3AM for you.

While it might result in some characters getting in that we don't see "worthy" right now it would probably result in even more diversity in roles, cabals and good characters just because they don't fizzle out when they cannot find their imm or leader for that standard interview they have been doing for 10-15 years now.

And holy #### I went off topic there but the same is true for Silent. In an attempt to control how cf is played we have a tollgate made to remove any "throw away chars" (or disliked players I guess) chance of entering and exploring.

And the problem with this tollgate is that the role I might want to play might not be the one that generates enough imm xp so I can participate in the area. So instead of playing that brooding non-religious Maran assassin that mostly speaks in single syllables (or maybe not a char outside the cabal wars) my chances would be so much higher if I played a loud mouth dwarf warrior with some endearing quirks/phobias that follows an active level 54 imm.

So to sum up I would question if the advantage of all these immortal tollgates really outweighs all the disadvantages these days when most players are getting older. Putting more power and responsibility in the hands of the players might be a good thing and those who play when there are 5 other players on might not feel that most of the MUD is unavailable for them.