Wed Jan 10 11:19:58 2007

At 2 o'clock AM, Day of the Sun, 27th of the Month of the Heat
on the Theran calendar Gronalka perished, never to return.

Though I was really annoyed when you showed up when I was already fighting two others in a raid situation. That fight went badly for you and the two others involved but it was mostly because I figured what the tactics would be on your side. I had to really fight against myself not to take your gear there.
The second time was just ballsy. I enjoyed that fight a lot. You ran me very close and that one time I had no hesitation in returning your armor back, though damn, I could have used that hide
I thought you would go places, way better than some of the other chars I have fought. Better luck with your next.

For what it's worth I didn't know you were fighting two others when I found you the first time. To me it looked like you were headed to kill Nexuns. Not that it would have changed anything.

Second fight was close, yea. I was amazed that you could pummel for DISMEMBERS through giant resist, five color mail, and stone skin. Yowzers!

I'm a hardcore dwarf player, and I've actually done your combo before with a very decent level of success. Keep on trucking!

This character just seem to fizzle out really fast for me. I really feel like I did a -terrible- job. The combo of legacies and specs that I picked did not work out as expected, and the PKs suffered particularly toward the latter part of the characters life. I think in the entirety of the characters life I was able to impress all of two mortals to befriend me. Gengki, who basically took his role in a direction that Gronalka couldn't follow, and Taqutin. Other than that I don't think anyone really cared for the character. I know the immortals had to be less than impressed also, because I never got much of a nod whatsoever - I got some exp for a role early on... but 120 hours later... nada.

By the end of I was a little frustrated that the character hadn't made any progress. (Frustrated with myself, not with anyone else.)I was also really, really, really bored. No outlanders and only the occasional criminal makes for a lot of sitting around or gear hunting. Two things which I'm not terribly fond of.

I'd love to here constructive criticsm. Why was this character a dud?

I liked him! As far as dud-liness, never played a warrior before, so I have nothing to base an opinion on, really. He was way tougher than me! Would have been fun to explore a little with you, but we quit being around at the same times. Maybe the next one will be more fun?!

PS - Thanks for the tips.

You were an awesome character! Are you new to CF?

No, not new to cf! But I've been stuck in a bard/healer/shifter rut for so many years. I *feel* like a complete newb though, this whole warrior thing is a different ball game. (Great at running, never bothered to stick around and fight before!)

Feel free to AIM me, if you want. You seem like a keeper.

fizzle1981

Well, it seemed like a typical routine for you was to go and attack the huntress, flee, wait for people to show up. Not that that's a terrible thing though. It just shows there is a lack of things to do (most of the time) for Tribunal.

Personally, with the lack of players, the Tribunal vs. Outlander war needs to be reviewed. Tribunal won't raid Outlander, like usual, without beefy numbers (usually consisting of warrior, healer, bard), plus they aren't ever really certain who is going to be there to defend, unless Taqutin (or any Justiciar) is online.

Outlander raiding the Tribunal is just lame. Not only do you have to have the numbers, but you have to deal with the annoyance of ANY Tribunal being online, whether they are in your PK range or not (doesn't matter) and deal with getting wanted and manacled, and special guards being on your ass the entire time. Then if you do manage to take the scales, the annoying wanted flag remains with you even after the Tribunal get their scales back. Now you have guards on main roads attacking you, you can't pass through any cities without the annoyance of guards. Raiding Tribunal is much more gay for Outlander than for a Tribunal to raid Outlander. Every Tribunal has no_recall/no_teleport at their disposal, and may cause limited casting for mages, and serious stat loss for warriors, while you may or may not get swarm of insects on you at the spirit. And trepidation and bioempathy rarely work on anyone with half-decent saves or are much higher level.

The raid situation needs to be more flexible, so that it happens more often, rather than once in a blue moon.

As for Immteraction, I've found that in Tribunal you either get a bunch, or you get none. And how much you get is largely dependant on how many criminal kills you get, and how well you uphold the laws. Otherwise, like many other characters in the game, you're just a faceless sheep.

What does that mean? If you want something, then you have to pursue it yourself. If you want Immteraction, then you have to give them a reason to pay attention to your boring ass (nothing personal, you said yourself you were bored). So if the player behind the character is bored, then you're probably boring to watch, too = little-to-no Immteraction. Maybe this is your tenth warrior, and that's why you were bored? Try playing a combination you've never played before, and stick it out thick and thin. Learn the class and all its facets so you keep it interesting. If you're interested, then more likely the Immortals will be more interested in watching you.

>Well, it seemed like a typical routine for you was to go and
>attack the huntress, flee, wait for people to show up. Not
>that that's a terrible thing though. It just shows there is a
>lack of things to do (most of the time) for Tribunal.

Guilty as charged. That was done deliberatly to say "I hunt the enemies of Tribunal."

>Personally, with the lack of players, the Tribunal vs.
>Outlander war needs to be reviewed. Tribunal won't raid
>Outlander, like usual, without beefy numbers (usually
>consisting of warrior, healer, bard), plus they aren't ever
>really certain who is going to be there to defend, unless
>Taqutin (or any Justiciar) is online.

Very true. You can't solo the Spirit, but many times I felt like we had a group of tribs that were -maybe- capable, but others weren't down to do it.

>
>Outlander raiding the Tribunal is just lame. Not only do you
>have to have the numbers, but you have to deal with the
>annoyance of ANY Tribunal being online, whether they are in
>your PK range or not (doesn't matter) and deal with getting
>wanted and manacled, and special guards being on your ass the
>entire time. Then if you do manage to take the scales, the
>annoying wanted flag remains with you even after the Tribunal
>get their scales back. Now you have guards on main roads
>attacking you, you can't pass through any cities without the
>annoyance of guards. Raiding Tribunal is much more gay for
>Outlander than for a Tribunal to raid Outlander. Every
>Tribunal has no_recall/no_teleport at their disposal, and may
>cause limited casting for mages, and serious stat loss for
>warriors, while you may or may not get swarm of insects on you
>at the spirit. And trepidation and bioempathy rarely work on
>anyone with half-decent saves or are much higher level.

I disagree with you here. Having played more outlanders (by far) than Tribunal, I'd say they were about equal in difficulty. The challenge is different, but the difficulty is the same. When raiding outlander you are 100% guaranteed to get insect swarm, which is far worse than manacle because it lasts longer and doesn't let you rest at all, spores so you aren't regenerating any mana, and thornheart on top of the insect swarms which is doing damage and lowering stats. You basically have to kill the Spirit quickly so that these things don't take their toll, and that is difficult to do because it resists metal and elemental attacks just like a druid. On top of this you have no way to tell what PCs are going to be trouble for you.

>The raid situation needs to be more flexible, so that it
>happens more often, rather than once in a blue moon.

100 + 10% agreed. The difficulty level needs to be toned down some.

>
>As for Immteraction, I've found that in Tribunal you either
>get a bunch, or you get none. And how much you get is largely
>dependant on how many criminal kills you get, and how well you
>uphold the laws. Otherwise, like many other characters in the
>game, you're just a faceless sheep.

I think anywhere immteraction is feast or famine based on the strength of your character.

>
>What does that mean? If you want something, then you have to
>pursue it yourself. If you want Immteraction, then you have to
>give them a reason to pay attention to your boring ass
> nothing personal, you said yourself you were bored). So if
>the player behind the character is bored, then you're probably
>boring to watch, too = little-to-no Immteraction. Maybe this
>is your tenth warrior, and that's why you were bored? Try
>playing a combination you've never played before, and stick it
>out thick and thin. Learn the class and all its facets so you
>keep it interesting. If you're interested, then more likely
>the Immortals will be more interested in watching you.

I think this is an excellent point. If your bored your boring. The tenth warrior thing is also right on the head, I've been playing way too many warriors lately.

All in all a constructive post. Appreciated, sir.

Oh, I definitely wasn't saying one was harder than the other. Both are annoying as all hell. Really, raiding any cabal isn't ideal for anyone solo. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Again, I just this some revision needs to be done with the lower number of players, to make raiding more feasible for one or two people. I'm not saying it can't be done, not by a long shot am I saying that. But there is a ton of risk involved, and that's more than likely intended. But I really enjoy capture the flag, and I'd like to see more of it happening. And I don't, because there seems to be just a bit too much risk involved for some people. So I agree with you that it's too difficult. Or on the flip side, you risk your ass raiding only to have someone too low level to defend against retrieve.

The only thing I argue is that raiding Tribunal has longer lasting effects of post-raid, and that is being wanted. You can heal spores, you can heal thornheart, with or without a healer, you can wait off the negative effects. But the only way an Outlander is going to get rid of a wanted flag is to die, and if you're pre-hero, that results in you losing exp, no matter what. To me, that doesn't equal out. Anyone can say anything different, it doesn't matter. I'm putting my foot down on this one. Personally, I'd like to see the spire as a free-game area. Not to let the laws apply there. Whether that makes sense for the cabal to do that or not, who knows, or who cares? Anyway, just my two cents.






"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire."

I liked what I saw of your character quite a bit, and had been eyeing you to be Vindicator. It seemed like you had a playable role and skillz, but I also got the sense that you couldn't quite get into playing all of the time so I was waiting a bit to see how things went.

From my limited view, you might have found other players more interested in interacting with you and making the character more exciting had you referenced your background more and been as animated as you were the times we spoke. I can't imagine you would have been as "friendless" as you claim if people saw what I saw. Unfortunately, sometimes you've got to convince other skilled players (maybe in the same boat as yourself) that you're worth the extra effort they need to put in to make their character come alive around you.

Best of luck finding a new character that you love playing.

Thanks for the kind words. I wanted to be Vindicator, but I just couldn't get over my negative feelings about the character. There was just no sizzle for me, and I could only get into the character some of the time - just like you say.

I appreciate the feedback on referencing my background. Sometimes that's hard to do when I get the sense that no one gives a sheeitemoslim. Thinking back though, when I have played winners in the past they made it a point to do this, or had a personality that lended itself to it.

Thanks for the feedback.

I loved you! You were there when Gengki didn't remember a thing and helped him back on his feet. Though, like I said in a different thread I knew you were highly annoyed with me, but I persisted as you were my only true friend.

From the first day we met, until the day I deleted you did seem to lack that "UMPH" that you really needed to get into the character. Nothing flawed, but just a lack of willingness to really get down into the RP sense. But, I took what you gave and ran with it until you got bored with me. Thanks for that.

Well, I certainly didn't get bored with you. Like I said in my goodbye, you were one of my only friends but you took your role in a direction Gronalka couldn't go. The powers that be in the Spire didn't trust you, and Gronalka the character didn't understand what was going on. I was in the process of deciding how to handle the sitution from an RP perspective when you deleted.

Actually, I never saw better RP from you until after you got in trouble w/ tribunal. I'd love to have kept going.

That's actually how I planned it out. I was kind of "Zombie'ish" until I got kicked from the spire due to the "spell".

The bad thing is that I wanted to hero before dropping that part of my role, or... at least stay in the spire more than two days but the character was getting really really sour. I barely wanted to log on and advanced my timing on the role to get me back into the character.

I had fully planned to get back into the spire, hero, get an assload of criminals under my belt to regain trust within the spire and then betray it again... but lost all interest when I couldn't stand in front of a freaking mouse and live.

And I'm only using your post as an example, Lin, not pointing fingers only at you.

But...

"I liked what I saw of your character quite a bit, and had been eyeing you to be Vindicator. It seemed like you had a playable role and skillz, but I also got the sense that you couldn't quite get into playing all the time so I was waiting a bit to see how things went."

This is precisely the opposite of how things should be, in my opinion. And this has been the staff attidude for years. Like, a decade even.

How many times have we all read here how someone felt they didn't receive any support, any positive feedback, any anything, really, and then on the death thread hear from an imm "I was just about to do X" or "I liked you and thought you might get X" or something along those lines?

In a case like this one, why wouldn't you instead of thinking you like him but aren't sure he's around and so hold off on anything, say "maybe if I give him this, it will push him over that edge to wanting to play all that extra time"?

The staff in general, I think, has always had the incentive concept bassackwards. You see someone you like, do something about it. How many times do people have to say that they aren't always looking for that uber quest skill, but rather just one local echo that says they are being noticed and appreciated and doing well. Or that little gift of some restrung nothing - I had a mug once that Ordasen made from the skull of some mage I killed. It was just a tankard restrung, but it was cool and I kept it most of my char's life. It did absolutely nothing to make the char more powerful or better in any numbercrunchy way. What it did was say "cool job."

I read your post here Lino and it makes me sad because if you and the staff in general had the attitude that said "I see something I like, let me do something to make that person want to keep it up" instead of "I see something I like, let me wait and see how long he does it or if he plans to log on more" or whatever other rationalization is used, I think cf not only would be more fun, but more populous.

Really.

And if the text doesn't convey the proper tone here, I'm not angry or mad so much as sad and somewhat dismayed. And certainly not at you, Lino. This is a comment toward the cf staff in general over the years. And I don't think it's a deliberate decision so much as it has become a habit, a culture of sorts that the staff has created over time. I think breaking that habit and changing the culture would go a long way toward making cf's players happier, and cf better.

nt

I'm serious, you have some very good points.

I can only speak for myself here, but I understand you are just using this as an example of something that you see throughout cf culture.

In my case, I cannot read roles, snoop characters, or see what other imms have written about them, so this (in addition to acknowledging my relative lack of experience as an immortal) tends to make me be more cautious about advocating for rewards than perhaps I should be.

Now what I did do was mention to other imms (I'm not sure whether it became part of his history or not) that I was watching him for Vindicator so that they would know I was thinking along the same lines if they agreed with me in my absence. I thought Gronalka understood he was being watched as well, but I may have been too subtle in that regard.

The other side of the coin that you aren't mentioning here is that people are always comparing themselves to other players. If you were chugging along with a character that you felt you were putting a lot of effort into and you see another guy that's been around for far fewer hours getting rewarded for what seems to be a character that bores them, wouldn't you feel a bit cheated? This thought could be stated a lot better as it's something I think a lot of Imms are taking into consideration, but my brain is a bit fried from work right now.

Yup, too subtle. I felt like I could just as easily be kicked out of Tribunal as made Vindicator. Some of that is your (good) roleplay about perfection, I'm sure... but really the fact that I was up for any kind of promotion was totally lost on me.

Let me elaborate. I was in Seantryn Modan a very long time, and thought it was probably just no one getting around to me. No biggy. I thought, "hey, I'm doing a pretty good job RPing all the time and fighting the enmies of trib. I bet I get moved straight to Galadon." Nope, I got the Voralian promotion... and then I was there forever. Kinda had the same thing happen again afterwards, expected to get moved up to Galadon shortly... but went to Hamsah instead. This is probably the first twinge I had of things going poorly. I had to have had a decent number of trib related kills under my belt, RP'd constantly and I was sitting in Hamsah while people I watched to the log in and right out thing were promoted ahead of me.

Finally got moved up to Galadon at around, I don't know... 130 hours maybe? At this point I looked at the life of this char and just felt really bad. I was certain I must be doing something -wrong- as I had had a provincial magistrate at 60 hours. Couple this with the fact that I had never recieved immortal experience, a short range title, an animated mob, a local echo a "An Immortal tells you, 'Impressive slaughter.'" I mean, you read imm comments all the time that are like "awarded X exp for random snoop = RP." I didn't even get that.

Now forgive me if this sounds whiney (which it might, it's been a rough day) I'm trying to just state matter of factly why I thought everyone thought my character sucks in the hopes that maybe we as a mud can improve on it in the future. So yea... way, way, way too subtle.

>I'm serious, you have some very good points.
>

Thanks.

>I can only speak for myself here, but I understand you are
>just using this as an example of something that you see
>throughout cf culture.
>

Exactly. You are by definition least to be accused of any such behavior, you're too junior and new at the job. I just co-opted your post as a means to address the larger issue. I'm glad you didn't take it personally, it was not directed at you individually.

>In my case, I cannot read roles, snoop characters, or see what
>other imms have written about them, so this (in addition to
>acknowledging my relative lack of experience as an immortal)
>tends to make me be more cautious about advocating for rewards
>than perhaps I should be.
>

Rightfully so.

>Now what I did do was mention to other imms (I'm not sure
>whether it became part of his history or not) that I was
>watching him for Vindicator so that they would know I was
>thinking along the same lines if they agreed with me in my
>absence. I thought Gronalka understood he was being watched
>as well, but I may have been too subtle in that regard.
>

As he mentioned below, no, he didn't understand that. This is a good object lesson, and I hope you (this time I do mean you) take away from this experience and re-evaluate the level of subtlety/obviousness in your interactions with mortals. That's all anyone can ask, really.

>The other side of the coin that you aren't mentioning here is
>that people are always comparing themselves to other players.
>If you were chugging along with a character that you felt you
>were putting a lot of effort into and you see another guy
>that's been around for far fewer hours getting rewarded for
>what seems to be a character that bores them, wouldn't you
>feel a bit cheated? This thought could be stated a lot better
>as it's something I think a lot of Imms are taking into
>consideration, but my brain is a bit fried from work right
>now.

I've always found that to be faulty logic. You shouldn't hold back on a character you believe deserves attention or interaction or reward just because there may be others who also may, but won't get it. You should do what is right, whenever you can. In the end, if the culture I describe changes as I think it should, more people will get "something", be it a mere pat on the back or echo, or a title or last name, or a step up to some piece of equ or up more to some new power or form or quest ability, etc. This will result in fewer people feeling neglected, and perhaps those that are were not given anything for a reason, and not because the imms just chose to wait longer, be more subtle, be less interactive, etc. You will always have people who believe they deserve but do not receive - I include myself among them with several characters - but that is not a reason for you or any member of the staff to choose not to give such attention to any char you see who you think has earned it, or would benefit from encouragement.

I really don't see a downside to being more encouraging than less.

Of course, I'm not saying be profligate with all the goodies. But when someone has played their character enough that you've developed a positive opinion, and are giving serious consideration to doing something for them, then maybe take a step back and say to yourself "maybe they have already earned it and I'll give it - or something else - right now, either as reward, or as partial reward and partial incentive for even better/more play in the future."

And I hope other Immortals take what you say into consideration, because I feel that what you say is very likely to be the general consensus of the CF playerbase.

I'm not sure what it'd be called, maybe a little bit of proactive and reactive, or something? But if an Immortal sees something good, jump on the opportunity and toss a dog a bone. When you're teaching a dog to sit, you tell it to sit then reward it with a treat. After you do it a few times, the trick begins to settle in, and it developes them, and they'll sit all the time when you tell them without a reward. Tossing players a "dog bone" will essentially help them to step up their own game. I think this is also why edges were added in, as "dog treats." Heh, stupid analogy, I know, but it works!

On the flip side, if someone is doing something r-tarded, Immortals should also slap a bitch (not to say I abuse dogs! Damn, this isn't working...Heheheh)

nt

You would attack the Huntress, then flee when you got the fight you were there asking for. That was pretty gay. It got to the point where I just didn't want to even bother showing up because after I got shields and you couldn't just spam bash, you wouldn't stay to fight. You were a griefer who used "raiding" as an excuse to try and kill the same person more than once in a half an hour. Thats pretty gay too.

If I was losing, yea, I'd flee. Why wouldn't I? That being said I don't recall ever running from you except to heal/prep and return. A lot of times when I'd hit the huntress I didn't know who was there, so I wouldn't prep until after they showed.

To be honest, it sounds to me like your just mad that I killed you a few times, and even more mad that I killed you with bash. I always sent you tells that were complimentary after, and I always left your armor. I never killed you (or anyone) twice in the same half hour, unless you were being the aggressor.

If you don't like that I'm coming to your cabal to kill you, come to my cabal and kill me. If you don't want to get killed at your cabal, don't show up. If I come to your cabal and you fight, and I kill you - don't complain.