A group of changes that go together:

1) Your preferred haste potion/pill/food/whatever is probably gone now. That is, if you've got one, you've got one, but it probably won't reset ever again. Fortunately, so is most everyone else's.

Strange bracers and the like are still out there, and are probably worth stabbing your neighbor over more than ever. Class-based haste is still out there. Enhanced reactions is still out there if you're a warrior. Some haste staves/scrolls/wands are still out there, and you'll see a couple more of those pop up here and there over the next week or so. Some of these, like an existing haste scroll or two I can think of, have interesting drawbacks.

2) Haste is slightly less good across the board. On one hand, this is a little bad if you have haste as a class/cabal ability. On the other hand, haste in the rest of the world just got a lot less common, which is more than a little good for you.

3) The combination of damage reduction preps and healing is in most cases less good. This includes NPC healer healing, bard song healing, PC healer healing, natural HP regeneration, shifter form regeneration, lifesurge, etc. This follows the same general rules as object-based healing and the like in the past; abilities you possess aren't a problem, but that aura potion is going to inhibit HP recovery across the board just as it inhibits damage across the board.

4) NPC healer prices have been adjusted, generally making them cheaper.

5) Deathblow is slightly less good. Battle Resistance is slightly less good. There's an excellent chance some other Battle powers will be tweaked about as much in the next few days as we see how this washes out.

I'm probably forgetting something, but I think that's it. Prepping is therefore generally less possible and less useful across the board, hopefully leaving more time to RP, explore, and PK and a little less time gathering stuff.

If someone wants to discuss all this stuff, feel free to start a thread on Gameplay or something. All I'm going to ask is that before you panic and post about how much weaker your character just became, take a minute and think about how similarly weaker other characters also just became. It's possible there are angles we missed and some things that will need further adjusting to make this all balance, but we've been pondering most of this for a while now.

I know I'm probably sort of an odd bird considering what I'm about to post, but here goes:

I've been looking for something to devote a good portion of my free time to for awhile now, various muds, MMORPGS, other games, and for some reason Carrion Fields has always been in my bookmarks. I've only played CF for a good 10 hours total but for the last year or so I have checked up on CF's site, forums, and unofficial forums. I always liked the IDEA of the MUD; quality RP, quality PK.

The biggest complaint that actually held me back from devoting my time to learning this MUD and competing: prep time. I don't like the IDEA of spending more time prepping for fights than actual fighting. I don't like the IDEA of time-investment making the difference in a fight over tactics. I saw a lot of posts over at Dio's about this sort of thing and it always bugged me.

Seems to me that this is a very positive change for the MUD as a whole and I will most likely be starting a proper character this weekend.

A bit silly I know, considering I've never _really_ played CF, but I wanted to chime in to let you guys know that there are morons like me out there, watching, wanting to play, but not doing so for various reasons.

Much as I'd expect, this wasn't perfect (even to my vision) in the first draft. Further tweaks and changes have been made to get closer to that, and some are most likely still to come. The ones I can remember off the top of my head:

1) The way sanctuary / black shroud interact with healing has been tweaked. Short version is, characters with sanctuary on their spell list don't reduce healing of them because of sanctuary, and don't reduce healing they do to others because of sanctuary on the others. However, a druid healing a warrior with sanctuary on them is going to lose some oomph.

2) Take everything in (1) and apply the same concept to bards and anthem of resistance.

3) Invoker shields have slightly less effect on healing. (They were reducing it a little more than they should.)

4) All shifter forms with regenerating capabilities have been re-evaluated and tweaked to some degree. Some specific comments: depending on your playing style, anaconda and diamondback especially may be quite a bit stronger now than they were before this set of changes started. Alligator got a lot better period.

5) Vampiric touch and soul drain healing has been adjusted.

6) A couple universal haste sources that we missed have been rectified.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something I changed and there's still more to come as time and sanity allow. We're also still talking about our preferred solution to super-tough areas.

Tweaked how this plays out in area explore and the like a fair bit, coming soon to a reboot/crash/whatever near you. It'll probably see further tweaking as I see how it plays out.

I like this change.. But still, there's one thing. When you picked preps to remove, did you really have to take away the only offensive prep? (Except for some minor ones)

There were like 6 defensive preps and one with which was mainly offensive (atleast that's how I saw haste). Why did you make it 6-0 instead of 5-1?

It's still definitly a positive change.

It's probably because haste had the offensive power that it did (for non-warriors or at pre-hero levels) that it felt like the most "necessary" prep and was in the most need of junkkicking.

I mean, coming into a fight with stoneskin and aura, sure, that's an edge... but those things never seemed to make dumb choices win as much as haste sometimes could.

Conspiracy?

Astillian's clearly upset. I don't think I've deleted any posts on this thread.

The changes were long overdue, but very incomplete, IMHO... and they cornholed my current character. Yes, there were adaptations I could have made, and probably quite a few subtle ways I could have dealt with them without being completely blown out of the water. I don't think that the changes made were adequate, and believe that the elimination of all preps and a significant subtraction of Battle cabal powers would have been a lot more suitable.

But over the years, I've grown tired of dealing with changes that so significantly impact the game I once played. The game must evolve, though, and a naturally desired result of such alterations is that it must bring in and keep new players. These changes might do just that, but it's probably going to be at the cost of losing many of the players who have been here playing the game for a long time because of the environment offered, that many of us had grown accustomed to playing. The inherent advantages are readily apparent. The effect of these changes on the older players... I guess you'll see that over time, but I don't really see the collective result being positive, in that regard. Then again, we've all read a gazillion 'farewell, I'm done playing' threads from players who are back in the BF or PBF's a month or four later when they can't really escape. Who knows about them.
I'm gone, though. It's not the same game anymore. Fourth age? Consider the third the last Cartherlen played.
Adios.

This post doesn't make any sense even if you try to assume it's correct, because it contradicts itself. It doesn't make any sense to want Battle super-gimped and all preps removed from the game and freak out about a step in that direction.

>But over the years, I've grown tired of dealing with changes
>that so significantly impact the game I once played.

If you're afraid of change, you're playing the wrong game.

There are great games that haven't changed in twenty or even hundreds of years. Go play Super Mario Brothers. Go play chess. Wrangle up someone's grandma and play yahtzee or bingo. But if you're looking for a game that isn't ever going to change, this ain't it and never has been.

>The game
>must evolve, though, and a naturally desired result of such
>alterations is that it must bring in and keep new players.
>These changes might do just that, but it's probably going to
>be at the cost of losing many of the players who have been
>here playing the game for a long time because of the
>environment offered, that many of us had grown accustomed to
>playing.

I gather you must not read either this forum or Dioxide's and somehow have missed the ass-big-pile of older players who have complained about the problems these changes are meant to address longer and louder than anyone.

slow wands/scrolls still as easy to require? I hope not, and in general I do not like these changes. that is all.

The whole prep system, and how it effected cf dynamics how it was set up was always a really sore point for me. Heck, I only ever knew of one barrier source (traded for ic, but it was too high level for my char to use before the character died).

The basic that you have implied is behind this change I support to the hilt.

I've always thought, "preps are fine but make them less powerful so that newbies can at least have fun, instead of making super powerful preps limited so the l33t easily and without danger pimp everyone not able to put in hundreds of hours to get to the l33t stage"


I can't say if that kind of thinking was behind this change, but it looks promising (without having played a char or had time to see these changes)

Thank you for this change. Even if it doesn't turn out how I would like it to eventually*, thanks for this change. it seems on the surface a huge step in the right direction!


*not that my opinion means much, I understand that.

This blows. I guess I will have to learn to play caballed characters because my uncaballed just got nerfed.

Yeh its a shifter question and I was just curious on your take on it.

A few forms that have regeneration now get less regeneration if they are using preps. Well, have you actually tested an unprepped anaconda, rattlsnake, sandlizard, crocodile agaisnt a typical strong foe?

I dont see any domination in the shifter side of things to date, so am curious why the one benefit of these forms was nerfed. Without preps they are going to get beaten down...and bad. Now less regeneration, less dodging from haste. The forms are pretty limited as it is.

And no, I am not playing some regenerating shifter. Just curious is all.

Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.

>Yeh its a shifter question and I was just curious on your
>take on it.
>
>A few forms that have regeneration now get less regeneration
>if they are using preps. Well, have you actually tested an
>unprepped anaconda, rattlsnake, sandlizard, crocodile agaisnt
>a typical strong foe?

Nope!

I'm not sure that I would see myself jacking up the likes of sand lizard or copperhead -- it's already pretty nice to have a clearly useful third form in a foci in which your fourth will often supercede it in most cases. If the likes of diamondback and anaconda seem weak to me now I'm sure we'll boost them in some way, either in the form of increasing their regen further or in some other fashion.

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"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

nt

I mean, wow. Just...Wow.

I kinda like the way this is going.....however...with these changes, will it not be a lot harder for players to kill certain mobs and go to certain areas, being how everyone is less powerful, are the mobs going to take any kind of power hit?

Certainly, the hasted mobs in tough areas take an immediate power hit like anyone else. Beyond that... we'll have to see how it shakes out. You're right in that the archetypal hell exploring supergroup with a tank loaded down with sanc, bard resist, invoker shields, and the kitchen sink is taking a big hit here and that'll probably have to be addressed in some way.

I remember ranting in dangeroom about what I thought was wrong about cf.

1. cf had no story, nothing official had happened really since I started playing some 9ish years ago, sure some isolated quests that and some dead imms but you never really knew what happened unless you were one of the few directly involved in something. And you had to be there to know, no history.

Bam and fourth age and very nice writeups, that was exactly what I sought after. History that everyone would know about, stories that brought cf forward. I thank you very much for that one recommendation would be to bring it to another page here perhaps and not just in the forum, but not that necessary. The post important is that information is there.

Another thing I ranted about was that if I wanted to make a warrior now I HAD to prep with atleast haste, because it was such a difference. If I'm not hasted and my opponent is I need to do some really smooth moves or really outclass him in eq to win, so generally I had to haste myself to be a winner. I also ranted some about barrier and instead giving mages some "legacy" quest at hero that could give them a power(for example choose between, orderly mind, 20% extra hp from eq, better defenses etc etc) and then nerf battle powers accordingly.

And bam again, a lot of the things I wanted went right in more or less. It makes me really happy to realise that the imms have the same view on some things and cf as I do. So I guess this whole rant was more or less a: Well done!

I do feel sorry for the ragers losing power, but I think these changes are going to be a helluva lot more positive than negative. PKing just got a little more 'gear and go' which is great for people who hate dying. General playing got easier time wise too.

I'd say I love you but I'm holding out for the sea cow. My new suggestion is, that it comes when a mariner beastmaster does bear call on the sea

bearkinsh
Reaching out to the sealife for aid, you call a Dugong to your side!

Yhorian.

If anything I don't think we did quite enough to Battle yet; I feel like we've depowered all their enemies but probably didn't do enough to them to match it.

As always, we'll see how it looks in play and adjust accordingly.

For any person whose playingstyle remotely resembles that of my own, the warrior and berserker classes just became more welcoming as well as more inviting than they have ever been before. Consider for a moment that in the past, I've had a strong penchant for playing rangers and mage classes primarily for their 'camouflage', 'word of recall' and 'teleport' abilities. I did this simply so that I would be able to avoid the (rather very many) occassions where my opponents had a superior prep knowledge to myself, and thus also those fights where a possibly better use of tactics alone wouldn't be able to save my butt due to the other warrior also being hasted, stoneskinned and whatnot. In a sense, that very prepsystem for non-mage characters which you've apparently now finally abolished to a good extent really inhibited my ability to enjoy this game more directly, as it forced me into either playing evasively or dedicating a good portion of my online time into something of a prep arms race.

And neither of those options were ever all that appealing to me, to be honest.

The reason you'll thus find me to be a vocal supporter of this decision you've made, is the notion that I am now quite likely to be able to compete, or just simply participate for that matter, in true cabal warfare and also to simply play classes that have no inherent evasive abilities, without mounting frustrations. I'd say it is more or less staggering just what kind of possibilities this change to the prep system can potentially offer a more casual player like myself. Though the onslaught of complaints from the resident powergamers will probably not be far behind. Best of luck with that I'd say.

Along with reaffirming my gratitude, there is one other last thing I'd like to say. Throughout the years that I've been a part of this lovely little community of CF players, I've found myself reconsidering my stances and opinions on several of the choices you all made for CF, in a way that was generally geared more positive towards the staff. I.e. the more experienced and knowledgeable I became about the game, the more I tended to start to agree with the hows and the whys of these decisions you as the staff made regarding the direction of the game. To this, there consistently have been two major exceptions however. The first was the state of the anti-paladin class prior to its enhancement with the various new weapon skills unique to the class, and the second was the game's prep system. In both of these cases, I only became more vocally opposed to the continued status quo of those two things as time went by.

Today, both of those two remaining sources of discontent for me have been fixed and in ways that leave a casual player such as myself with a great optimism with regards to the quality of his future gaming hours here at CF. Basically, I want to say this;

Thank you.

Be warned though that there will be some who will strongly differ in my opinions about all of this. But at any rate, I have said my part.