All of my experiences as a player and a staff member support the thinking that your proposed way of doing things is a much, much bigger headache. I'd rather have someone occasionally fall through the cracks on Maran or a tattoo or whatever else than have everything come easy and/or automatically and have to deal with the tantrums that come as a result of someone being held to reasonable standards.

If more people could handle being held accountable for their RP (or lack thereof) and were willing to respond to legitimate IC punishment, being told no, being asked to wait, having their behavior corrected, etc. by saying to themselves, "Oh crap, I goofed. I totally deserved to be made Anathema...", for example, I think your way would work. Unfortunately, whatever comes quick/easy to most players tends to be taken as their birthright and #### us if we muddy their "fun" with role-play or the consideration of other people's fun, amongst other things.

I also think you're exaggerating. It's not as if CF has transformed entire portions of the game into DLC or something. Again, there is exactly one <1> area in CF that requires, indirectly, immortal "review" to gain entry to. Likewise, Fortress is quite literally the only cabal for which some of its powers require being promoted by an immortal, a process that I think works well enough. And edges, well.. I'm tired of repeating myself on that one.

1: or maybe two, I honestly have no clue what the deal is with Plane of Shadow. My understanding is that if mortals cannot enter it without help now, they will be able to when it's "done".