Let's get rid of the xp holes. To some extent, I can understand that you'll have to rank a level again if you get killed by NPC, but let's get rid of the extra 20% hole, shall we? I'd say this would only be reasonable to remove punishment, as I see ranking a level again as enough punishment as it is.

Getting lore skill up to the point at which it is useful takes too long time, as it is not convenient to spam it(there is way you can spam it efficiently, but a newbie won't find it by accident and it basically requires you to be in Hero range anyway). This makes it useless in lowbie levels, as both my characters that had it had more than 100 hours played before they got it to the point at which it was useful. So, something needs to be done about it. I'll try to throw in few suggestions: Make the chance of lore skill improvement 10x more probable than it is now. Give a huge bonus to the skill improvement chance when a character uses lore to identify item he hasn't lored before.

CF economy is somewhat broken, as shopkeepers don't have money to buy items. Also, the items they sell should be useful to adventurers, not some useless junk, as if it is junk, no-one wants to buy stuff from them any more and they become something. Also, shopkeepers could generate money a bit more rapidly than they do today(this would help making their wares more dynamic, as there would be more items sold by players on sale). Shopkeepers being broke all the time is rather frustrating when you are trying to raise money by selling items.

1. Dude I hate ranking, but even I don't think xp holes are that big a deal. At most it's like an extra run through an area usually.

2. I agree lore is a pain in the ass. You should get a 10 point increase to lore at 40 and another 10 point increase at hero. Another thing I'd like to see is a sage in certain cities who will identify items for a fee depending on the level of the item. Also make it so you could barter for this as well.

3. I agree the economy seems sort of broken sometimes. It's much better then it was though. The biggest problems I see are stores going broke super quick. What I suggest is that stores trade with stores or people in other cities on a randomn basis. Maybe like every 2 hrs or so a caravan of mobs travels from one city to another. These merchants who are well guarded would have a ton of coin and maybe items that PC thieves could try to steal at a risk of getting attacked by guards. When the Mob merchant caravan reached the other city, that city has their shops refreshed. I think it could add a lot of fun, and tons of questy kind of things like guard the caravan, or stop the caravan, etc.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

The general push in your comments is to make dying less tragic. If we were to get rid of full looting and xp penalties for mob deaths, then I propose the following:

Characters can only sit in their guilds for a maximum of 5 minutes at a time, after which their guildmaster will kick them to the guild entrance.

The RP reason would be that they aren't furthering themselves by hanging out and they need to get cracking on being a warrior, or bard, or paladin or what have you. The guildmaster can't possibly be proud of the person that does nothing but warm a bench.

The real application would be that, since dying has no real consequences any more, one shouldn't cry when someone PKs you or you mob die. You get to keep the majority of your equipment and you suffer no xp penalty.

The horrendous guildsitting that has been so long a part of CF needs to go if there are no more penalties for dying. Let's bump up the PK aspect of the game.

>The horrendous guildsitting that has been so long a part of CF
>needs to go if there are no more penalties for dying. Let's
>bump up the PK aspect of the game.

This is why we implemented raidable guilds in 1996 or so.

.

That really says more about the kinds of characters you prefer to play (and the kinds you won't play or rarely play) than it does about anything else.

.

Clarify something for me for a moment, if you would.

When a character dies in any shape or fashion, the following will (almost) always ensue;

* A partial loss of constitution.

* A fair chance you will lose some or all of your gear to the person(s) that killed you, to someone randomly passing by, to any Necromancer who has reached the 15th rank, to corrupt/sly/evil groupmates, to a lack of area knowledge on your part, due to your corpse being inside a deathtrap, and so on.

* You're being put out of the action for a fair bit due to being in ghost status.

* Injury to personal pride. (Very minor issue, of course.)

As I mentioned before, when you consider how omnipresent the above can be for any players here at CF due to the cutthroat nature of its PK system, it always seemed to me that all the requirements for the game to be able to maintain its imagine and reputation of being 'tough' have been met with already. On top of that, the consequences of having mobdeath experience penalties seem to vanish either largely, or almost completely once you and your opponents are both heroes within your characters their guilds. A feat which in turn is one of the end goals of the majority of characters generated every day.

Thus, my question to you basically is this - against all this background, what exactly is it that keeps making you so very convinced that the removal of mobdeath experience penalties would make dying become without any consequences?

Anyway, my apologies if this became a little lengthy.

>Clarify something for me for a moment, if you would.

Sure

>When a character dies in any shape or fashion, the following
>will (almost) always ensue;
>
>* A partial loss of constitution.

You can train it back up if you are that anal about having max CON all of the time.

>* A fair chance you will lose some or all of your gear to the
>person(s) that killed you, to someone randomly passing by, to
>any Necromancer who has reached the 15th rank, to
>corrupt/sly/evil groupmates, to a lack of area knowledge on
>your part, due to your corpse being inside a deathtrap, and so
>on.

You should be able to regear to a suitable hit/dam to PK someone within 15 minutes. Get gear, PK someone, and take their gear.

>* You're being put out of the action for a fair bit due to
>being in ghost status.

Time you should be using to get some basics.

>* Injury to personal pride. (Very minor issue, of course.)

This is actually my most major issue.

>Thus, my question to you basically is this - against all this
>background, what exactly is it that keeps making you so very
>convinced that the removal of mobdeath experience penalties
>would make dying become without any consequences?

To put it bluntly, I think it makes the game too easy.

' To put it bluntly, I think it makes the game too easy. '

Question. What would you have done with those players who manage to reach the hero ranks without suffering a single mobdeath in the process? Have the Immortals force them to use the suicide command just before they strike down the last mob they need to advance to rank 51, in order to keep the 'challenge' for them up to par with that which all other less skilled players experience?

Once a player has indeed reached the hero rank the issue basically falls away almost completely as well. Every one of the other issues following a death which I named never will. That is the difference between mobdeath experience penalties and the various other consequences of having a death with a character, and thus why I think the former should be dropped while I also think the others should remain. Those other consequences of dying are an integral part of the challenge of playing/playerkilling at CF. The exp penalties from mobdeaths however are unrequired annoyance that places a larger burden on ranking and discourages early/earlier exploration. At least, to me that's how it is.

And should they indeed ever be dropped, I doubt anyone will actually shed a tear over them including yourself. That's all I have to say about this subject for now.

Thanks for the reply by the way.

Question. What would you have done with those players who manage to reach the hero ranks without suffering a single mobdeath in the process? Have the Immortals force them to use the suicide command just before they strike down the last mob they need to advance to rank 51, in order to keep the 'challenge' for them up to par with that which all other less skilled players experience?

This analogy makes no sense at all. The game rewards skill. We don't penalize you for it. The player who didn't die faced the same challenge as a newer player, and they were more capable of dealing with it. Thus, they collect the reward of a faster path to hero.

Death needs to have a significant price for both mechanical and roleplay reasons. I don't foresee any changes on this front.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

' This analogy makes no sense at all. The game rewards skill. We don't penalize you for it. '

I assumed it would be quite obvious to all that this analogy was never to be taken very literally. It was just an improvised (and admittedly poor) method to help him reflect for a moment on how his reasoning didn't apply to every single CF player.

' Death needs to have a significant price for both mechanical and roleplay reasons. I don't foresee any changes on this front. '

In the past similar statements have been made on certain game issues which were eventually tweaked in various ways nonetheless. As such, I believe I will take this one with a grain of salt as well. Also, we seem to have a fairly large difference of opinion on how to best define 'significant'.

But that is quite alright.

Let's get rid of the xp holes.

I think the change we made a few years ago to eliminate XP holes constantly increasing was a pretty good change. I kind of like it where it is: dying still sucks big time, but you won't ever find yourself in a 350K hole (and yes, I was at one point in a 350K hole).

Getting lore skill up to the point at which it is useful takes too long time, as it is not convenient to spam it(there is way you can spam it efficiently, but a newbie won't find it by accident and it basically requires you to be in Hero range anyway). This makes it useless in lowbie levels, as both my characters that had it had more than 100 hours played before they got it to the point at which it was useful.

Lore isn't supposed to be useful to newbies; it's supposed to measure the knowledge your character has gleaned through life in Thera, and his/her ability to extrapolate that knowledge from one item to another. A level 15 just doesn't have that measure of experience. I'm fine with lore the way it is.

That being said, I'm also a strong advocate of other ways for newbies to ID gear, besides relying on lore.

CF economy is somewhat broken, as shopkeepers don't have money to buy items. Also, the items they sell should be useful to adventurers, not some useless junk.

As you can well imagine, this is a freakin' HUGE project. I'm a big advocate of this as well, and it is in work (though simmering on a back burner right now). Hopefully we can slide it to the front sometime soon.

Thanks for the input (especially the thoughtful and non-ranting format!), keep it coming!

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

>Lore isn't supposed to be useful to newbies; it's supposed to
>measure the knowledge your character has gleaned through life
>in Thera, and his/her ability to extrapolate that knowledge
>from one item to another. A level 15 just doesn't have that
>measure of experience. I'm fine with lore the way it is.


Thats a cool thought. Why not give automatic percentage points per every 5 ranks or so, they after rank 40 give them every rank so by 51 it should be usable or maxed. (Im not sure what rank it becomes "useable") You could even tie in the amount of lore points you get to wisdom stat?? So by the time a gnome thief was 51 he would have naturally gleaned more knowledge then a giant may have. By then doing this you would code out the possibility of it increasing with spam. Because when you consider the reality of it, you should't get better at identifying something you dont know what the hell it is, by staring at it in wonderment over and over. You still don't know what the hell it is.

POSTER'S DISCLAIMER: "Of course....I don't play anymore, but its just my 2 cents."

Just for the sake of arguement, would you (and Doge) rather receive standard lore improvements based on:

a) Level gains? Say 2% for every five levels after 10 (yes, I know this won't max you out).

b) Hours played? Say 1% every ten hours.

And remember, base it on the intent of what the lore skill is.

As for spamming lore, you're right, it doesn't make sense that you'd get better at identifying something by staring at it over and over. But we really don't have any good way to tell if you're spamming lore at one item 100 times or at 100 different items one time each. I prefer to think that you're doing the latter.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

But we really don't have any good way to tell if you're spamming lore at one item 100 times or at 100 different items one time each.

That wouldn't be hard at all, FWIW.

The issue I have with both:
a) Level gains? Say 2% for every five levels after 10 (yes, I know this won't max you out).
b) Hours played? Say 1% every ten hours.

is that if you're using the skill with any frequency, this is happening. I'm not sure why you'd get better at Lore without studying things of note, and I think the other solution we've previously discussed handles this better.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

is that if you're using the skill with any frequency, this is happening.

Why would you use something frequently that is 100% useless at 75%? Well if you were spamming it, of course, but if it doesn't give worthwhile information, there isn't any reason to use it with any frequency at all. I'm sure you'll agrue it does give useful info at 75%, but you are wrong, and I'll preempt your argument by telling you that you are wrong and will continue to be wrong in advance. Lore at 75% gives you zero useful info that can't be gleaned from another *free from cost* source.

Now... if lore gave a sort of general hint as to where the item might be found. Like... "Appears to be of elven make", or "Seems to be the craftwork of Aldeveri" then it would be useful at 75%, useful to newbies, useful to hero's even without being as exact as identify. Bonus! It's in line with the general thinking of the skill.

Implement it now. So sayeth me.

Laearrist

>
>As for spamming lore, you're right, it doesn't make sense that
>you'd get better at identifying something by staring at it
>over and over. But we really don't have any good way to tell
>if you're spamming lore at one item 100 times or at 100
>different items one time each. I prefer to think that you're
>doing the latter.

Considering in CF ranks=experience and experience=ranks but hours do not equal experience and/or ranks I think having it tied to rank would be the best way to do it. Why should a rank 15 level sitter have a higher lore % then a hero? That is, I am still going by your good arguement that lore is a "measure the knowledge your character has gleaned through life in Thera".

Oh, and I agree that heroes not automaticly having maxed lore is a must as well. I do think it should be tied to wisdom though. A giant just wont pick up as much worldly knowledge along the way through life as a h-elf would. (I realised my earlier example of gnome is a bad one since I forgot they get lore bonus anyway, assuming they still do.)

To reply to Valg:
"is that if you're using the skill with any frequency, this is happening. I'm not sure why you'd get better at Lore without studying things of note, and I think the other solution we've previously discussed handles this better."

Like I said, we are going on Kastellyn's idea that wisdom of items is gathered through knowledge gleaned through life in Thera. I can see improving 'identify' spell through spam, but not lore. Unless you actually go out get the knowledge and study will you be able to look at that widget and say, "Ya...Ive seen one of these before in my travels, its a automatic coffee stirrer."

POSTER'S DISCLAIMER: "Of course....I don't play anymore, but its just my 2 cents."

Like I said, we are going on Kastellyn's idea that wisdom of items is gathered through knowledge gleaned through life in Thera. I can see improving 'identify' spell through spam, but not lore. Unless you actually go out get the knowledge and study will you be able to look at that widget and say, "Ya...Ive seen one of these before in my travels, its a automatic coffee stirrer."

We're agreeing there, but it's a matter of what you consider as a good yardstick of that knowledge. The solution I hinted at with Kasty introduces one, and down the road a bit we can discuss this again.


valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Lore isn't supposed to be useful to newbies; it's supposed to
measure the knowledge your character has gleaned through life
in Thera, and his/her ability to extrapolate that knowledge
from one item to another. A level 15 just doesn't have that
measure of experience. I'm fine with lore the way it is.

I agree with this. A 15-lvl Paladin should not have some intimate understainding of Defiance, for example. That must come with time. However, the only way to get lore to usefulness is some type of spam. Why not have lore be an innate abilty of all PCs that simply increases with time? I believe bards, svirf, and gnomes have this in some guise already. In other words, their lore ability is not a simple skill check. It's capped somehow based on level. I am unsure how this would impact the uniqueness of bards, svirf, and gnomes (or even magi). But these could simply be better at the whole thing. The concept is, simply put, that lore increases with character age as opposed to spamming "lore 1.". Just a thought...

>Let's get rid of the xp holes. To some extent, I can
>understand that you'll have to rank a level again if you get
>killed by NPC, but let's get rid of the extra 20% hole.

Meh. 20% isn't a huge deal. In your system, if someone just ranked then there's very little disincentive to dying. Just con loss. I still remember when people got themselves into 150k xp holes, so I'm not too bothered by the 20% thing.

>Getting lore skill up to the point at which it is useful takes
>too long time, as it is not convenient to spam it.

Agree. Lore kind of sucks. My suggestion would be to nerf it somewhat w/ respect to the information it provides, but make it easier to perfect. If you make lore, in its current incarnation, too easy to perfect, then you diminish the utility of classes with the identify spell/commune. Imho, perfected lore should still be inferior to identify. Presently it's so time-consuming to perfect, though, that I don't even bother trying.

>CF economy is somewhat broken, as shopkeepers don't have money
>to buy items. Also, the items they sell should be useful to
>adventurers, not some useless junk.

Agree. Though, I don't think the rate that they accumulate new gold should be all that fast. If I "clean out" a merchant, I shouldn't be able to sell to him again for a while.

As for sold gear, yeah, most of it is lame. From what I gather, this is being addressed with newer areas, and area writers are being encouraged to have things for sale that are actually useful. If nicer gear is eventually sold, it shouldn't be so nice that it displaces other gear one typically gets from killing semi-tough mobs.

there are no xpholes these days.

Yes there are. Even these days.

Maximum xp to next level is an additional 20%. That's maybe an extra 30 minutes of ranking. Get over it.

Some people will interpret these experience holes as a genuine annoyance, and not at all as extra challenge to overcome. I am one of those. I will continue to be one of those. Get over this fact.

I don't think you would have survived the -200,000 exp holes I had as a newbie. Just suck it up, the extra 20% can suck yes, but as they've said before "death shouldn't come without consequence". Or similar things that have been said over the years. Just be more careful.

You're quite right, I didn't. Before the experience penalties were reduced to today's propertions, I never made a character that went over the rank 25 - rank 30 range because of them. It was only after the reduced experience penalties were implemented that I, after three years of playing at CF, continued with one of my characters until I reached hero with it for the first time.

As for 'death shouldn't come without consequence', I'd say I have two comments to make on that. Firstly, death already is never without consequence as it is while being quite onmipresent most of the time as well. I would consider these two things sufficient penalty in themselves. The experience penalties on mobdeaths always seemed a little bit excessive by nature, though they're no longer the characterbreakers they once were for me.

As for being more careful - if only it were as simple as that! A brief moment of loss of attention or concentration, the error of a groupmate, unfortunate coincidences, and many more things can and will cause you to be confronted with experience penalties before you even have a chance to react. No, the simple fact of the matter is that I advocate abolishing experience penalties from mobdeaths or suicide alltogether, as in my opinion the MUD would be beter off without them for several reasons. Unlike a few others, this doesn't mean I will begin a crusade or begin to stomp my foot on the issue at every possible opportunity. What it does mean is that I will simply voice my opinion on the matter every now and then. It is up to the staff to decide how to deal with this feedback that this one player is giving them.

I actually think in a sense xp holes help newbies. The main challenge in CF is PK, not being able to get to level X. The game becomes harder as you increase in rank. You don't want to power level as a newb - you'd just get overwhelmed at the higher levels.

You want some penalty attached to death, perhaps make it so there isn't an exp hole until level 6 (newbie academy graduation).

This would benefit new players only, since any veteran breezes through the first few ranks without looking back once.

I honestly don't think lore or XP holes are what frustrates newbies the most. We gotta find a way to make full looting less 'harsh' without disabling looting of armor. I suggest better outfit that is class specific and almost equivalent to non-limited gear you could easily attain at that level anyway. Fact is, multikilling and full looting is the major frustration in CF. Corpseguard helps but I don't think it goes far enough to make the game more attractive to play as someone who isn't able to survive easily.

My basic grab stuff fast regear set for a warrior is +14 hit, +14 dam, +30 hp, +2 str, -5 saves a couple of average 12 weapons. I buy the rings and grab everything else. Any experienced player can probably come up with equal or better in under half an hour. I'm going off a memory of a few months old, but if I recall correctly outfit provides gear not nearly as good.

Perhaps I am wrong but, I don't think it would be all that detrimental to game balance if outfit provided a set about 80% of that at level 20 and on, perhaps even scale upward with level to be a bout +20/+20.

Also, making two outfit sets, one hp based for mages, one hit/dam based for everyone else, seems to make sense.

>I honestly don't think lore or XP holes are what frustrates
>newbies the most. We gotta find a way to make full looting
>less 'harsh' without disabling looting of armor.

Well, I suppose people are different. When I recall my newbie years, I remember that I really got into CF only after I found Diku's and Zulgh's old web pages. Item IDs and maps. When you know what you are doing, the game becomes a lot more interesting. Looting never really pissed me off too much, and iirc I did not get full looted all that often (probably because my gear sucked). However, I can see how it can be frustrating for other people, and I agree that making outfit a bit better wouldn't hurt.