http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=47373&mesg_id=47373&page=

Basically, you (the IMMs) created a faulty reward system. The idea was great, the implementation, not so great. Players were (are?) upset.

So you began to try and fix these issues:

Edge points became transparent
Role contest rewards were greatly scaled back
More tweaking to edge points

Unfortunately, you never really attempted to fix the culture. It was more like "Well ####, they are complaining about this so let's fix this" when in actuality, they weren't necessarily complaining about that IN AND OF ITSELF.

So now, you have solid, respectable players that can't/won't play because they can't have all the shiny bells and whistles that they are accustomed to. And you can't fix that problem now because you've created a culture of entitlement (short of giving everyone a quest skill at level 1 and 100 edge points at level 10).

Basically, your solution to the reward problem was just to make it harder to get rewards. That's not the solution. The solution would have been to make "rewards" less meaningful and place more meaning on important things (which you have begun to try to do, at least to my poor intelligence) like roleplay, playing a character with integrity and passion, etc.

Basically, I feel kinda bad because you guys are trying really hard to fix the problem. Unfortunately, I don't feel too bad because this problem was something that needed to be fixed years ago.

PS If you want, I have ideas that would change CF completely (but not mechanically at all...well, maybe slight mechanical change) and IMHO solve all the problems you currently have.