I thought it would be nice to discuss how the staff views secrets of cf and how the playerbase should act. Several things in cf are balanced with the thought that everyone cannot know about this item. For example thief poisons was up until recently like this, or atleast the playerbase believed it to be so.

ABS and other preps is the prime example. Imms say they are so easy to find, that they are everywhere. This might be true, I've found several myself as I like to explore. However as soon as some become public they move around them or threathen to do it. It is highly forbidden to post any knowledge about any wands. Why is it so? Is cf not balanced for having every mage run around with abs, well why not limit that with other means like limited wands(they are already) etc?

EVERY good mage has wands, it is a must to survive. And a lot of that knowledge is being saved in nice .txt files that circulates. Sure a lot of people have found their own wands too. Fighers are becomming as dependant on preps as anyone, same lists there circulate.

Pretty much every char we has seen as exceptional has not found all preps by himself, has not learned all quests by himself etc.

Same with area explore. Some are balanced by though mobs but are simple with puzzles and quests, atleast for most part. Like Thar-accacia and some are the opposite like Silent Tower. Some quests are so freakishly hard and you are being punished so hard for failing.(for example death+full loot) so only a select few progress in that tower. And those select few either dedicate their all their chars to the tower or just...share and discuss on AIM. Same with Hell, the famous imm group knowledge is still inherited and if you don't know that you cannot progress reasonably. Some stuff you do down there is pretty illogical.

I remember when Strahd had maps, I remember diku maps of four first circles and the unlimited wands were semi common knowledge. These days imms want even cabal powers to be secret, not even ids of area explore items are to be shown. You should find out everything by yourself as the cf motto is that it has overpowered items and wands but they are balanced by the fact that no one can get them?

Well we saw what happened when someone very skilled spam practiced for 25 hours, used barrier all the time from 36, used the knowledge to get down to atleast the 7th circle, used knowledge to kill Archmages most have not even seen(Vivimancer for example). No one will get that knowledge all by himself or in game unless he is shown all by someone. I won't critique Cabdru, I think the player who played him rocks and it has really made me wanting to take up cf again. So the discussion is not about him.

I'm not saying we should "allow" posts of quests of silent, because that would ruin a damn fine area. But how about making them easier and instead balance the eq in there. How about not being so anal with wands and preps, how about not bothering if someone posted an ID of mel-kartha? And if you notice that balance has suddenly shifted, instead of punishing those without permas perhaps try and balance items/wands?

Rambling now so I will stop, I hope we can have a mature discussion about this without deleted posts.

Making something overpowered and unbalanced WILL break game balance eventually.

Making it 'really hard to do' or 'unknown' doesn't restore that balance. I understand the whole role play/fantasy aspect of.. say being Sparhawk and being the ONLLLLLLY person in Thera with Bhelliom. It works wonders in books, not in games.

A great example of this is Roll-canceling in CVS2 (In short, a way of hitting two buttons between 1/60th to 3/60th of a second before finishing a move, to make you invincible during it.) Hard to do, and even harder to do consistently, but after a few people found out, some crazy people (like myself) practiced the hell out of it got very efficient at it. What happened? Being able to Roll-cancel became damn near mandatory to be competitive at the game and completely ripped apart the balance.

CF, unlike CVS2, can change these problems when they get exploited... but changing how roll-canceling is done does not fix the problem. Someone will find it again, figure how to do it again, and exploit it again. As long as you keep roll-canceling (or whatever else you want to call it) in CF, the problem will never go away; only repeat.

In another analogy to CVS2 roll-canceling....

So now in CF you've got some awesome preps out there, that are "sooooooo easy to get" and "soooooo easy to figure out". Soooooo easy that anyone can find them right? Similar to roll-canceling, someone figured it out, WHY NOT YOU??? Roll-canceling is not to hard to pick up if SOMEONE SHOWS you howto do it. Therein lies the problem; someone SHOWING you howto do it. Not many people can/will figure it out themselves and soon knowing how to do it becomes very critical to staying competitive. Is it absolutely essential? No, but not having/not doing it gives you a huge disadvantage. So the information leaks out, or people genuinely figure it out due to necessity of having/wanting to stay competitive. Being the only person playing CVS2 without roll-cancels in a room of players that roll-cancel sucks. And when you ask someone "Hey, what is that? What does it do? Where do you get it?" and they don't answer your question...

You don't say "Oh gee! What a good roleplayer! It is my duty as a Roleplayer to go on some holy quest to figure out what it is he has! Whooo Hooo!"

You say "Jesus, what a (whatever your favorite curse is)."


Either way the next problem arises...
Is roll-canceling legit? Is it a cheat? Is it some sort of hack that should be banned from the game? The people who can do it say "It's easy! Just practice! Just figure it out! Everyone can do it!" The people who can't figure it out/can't do it say "No! It's a cheat/bug/hack/lame thing that's ruined the balance!"

Then the Immortals have to do something, and the only guarantee they have is that whatever they do, will never make everyone happy.

I don't foresee any policy changes along this line.

A lot of this is respecting the wishes of the authors who created the works. As someone who has never made that kind of contribution to Carrion Fields, you are likely unaware of the time and effort involved, but it is punishing. Many of our authors enjoy making puzzles, and it loses a lot of appeal when solutions are posted. They have a simple request, because it's a negative requirement: Don't go out of your way to spoil things for other players. All you have to do to comply is not repost, email, or catalog the types of information we've requested be kept quiet.

I'll state the broader issue more clearly: When I think of issues that legitimately threaten CF's longevity, the number one issue by a wide margin is staff burnout. The game requires a tremendous amount of energy to maintain and improve, and I'm absolutely convinced that if all staff were hitting on all cylinders all the time, every other problem would disappear with a quickness.

A number of our players (current and past) obviously don't give a #### about the morale of the staff, and take active steps to damage it for their own gain. (One asshole in particular should pencil in a brief meeting with me on his CF calendar.) Some of them are just burnout cases who can't deal with the consequences of their actions, like the people who get denied for cheating and then try to post as many spoilers as possible. Others just want recognition or notoriety, and aren't willing or able to generate it through exceptional play, so they resort to childish, short-sighted behavior, like spreading rumors (true or false, doesn't seem to matter), spamming, or trolling.

The real shame is that the players we love, those who generate a positive experience for themselves, the staff, and the other players tend to get pummeled on the forums. Shoot down a troll, and two more trolls emerge to call them tyrants or fascists. Make a positive comment about a change, and get called a brown-noser. It's third-grade playground rules, and it's no wonder a lot of really great players (and staff) don't like to wade into the forums unless pressed. How many imms do we have? How many routinely involve themselves in public discussions?

(It's not a time issue for many people- I hear from nearly every member of the staff through more private channels on a regular basis.)

I'm not saying we should "allow" posts of quests of silent, because that would ruin a damn fine area. But how about making them easier and instead balance the eq in there.

We don't want a defanged game, where all the challenges are downgraded to the point where they are meaningless, and aren't worth doing because the payoff isn't anything great to begin with. CF's longevity is largely predicated on its challenge-- how many other games do people play for 12 years? Take away the challenge, allow everyone to "Beat" the game after playing it for 3 months, and why would they continue?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I love some quests and I was so proud when I figured out the one in the the old svirf city. I had really fun. So I'm not saying that you should post solutions to all quests. Your area k'tengs is very fun to look around in.

But two things:

First, Hell and Silent Tower are the two best areas in the game I think. Hell contains extremely powerful eq, pretty much NO ONE is figuring out how to get down by the circles by themselves. It is just not feasible at some places. Like get that from an item desc without clues and give it to some random guy. Everyone usually does the gathering train at circle X for regens, mask, gloves etc. And the group always get lead by someone that knows how to get down there.

Silent Tower is different, I think most solo explore there as it is easier. But no progress is really being made, how often do you see eq from Silent? Why not just make it so more people actually has a chance of seeing more of it and just not con die? I personally see no chance of another archmage going down by a group that has never shared any ooc info.

Second. I just belive you have taken the whole secret thing too far. When I see a newbie being bashed on newbie channel by an imm because he asked where the cartographer is(it was night). Just because the mob is involved in a newbie quest.

cf will never be a defanged game, because it is PK that drives it forward. Making overpowered eq avaliable to a select few or making some classes dependant on preps that are secret is not a way to make cf last longer. Making things a hassle to play is not always good.

>Second. I just belive you have taken the whole secret thing
>too far. When I see a newbie being bashed on newbie channel by
>an imm because he asked where the cartographer is(it was
>night). Just because the mob is involved in a newbie quest.

While we do try to discourage quest discussion on the newbie
channel, I agree that sometimes there are better ways to handle
those questions. In the example you mention, it would be a good
opportunity to explain day/night and the use of 'where' to
locate (non-sneaking) mobs.

I personally suggest prayer on quests if it is confusing, so the
Immortal can guide you appropriately. It may be that they are
unfamiliar with the quest, or unwilling to help at the discretion
of the author, but for newbies in particular it does offer a more
direct way to maybe get mobs along the way offering directions.

Qaledus
qaledus@carrionfields.com

Basic OOC information sharing for a game like this is unavoidable. I like to think I know quite a lot about the game and I learn more with every character. I discovered how to find the Vivimancer with my last hero without OOC aid, and I certainly wont be free with distributing that and similair information. It is a matter of respect both for the author and my own efforts. I think a lot of other more 'in the know' characters feel the same. I think most of the priviledged sharing is contained within small groups and while this isn't ideal it is far different from it being posted where everyone and their dog can see.

For the record, I have seen a lot of silent and hell gear in circulation lately.

Saroiya

So name a single hell group to make it to Satan that was led by someone who didn't already know how to get there?

See, you had the original imm run group, then the group ran by someone who had access to the info to begin with, and people who were in that group, or people who were in groups that were led by people from that group.

I can't name a single, purely explored on their own, group to make it to Satan. I don't think I can name one that made it past the 6th Circle.

If you don't see a problem with it all being driven by people who had access to info they really probably shouldn't have, then you and I just have a fundamental difference of opinion. The whole trickle down approach doesn't strike me as terrifically challenging game-skill wise, so much as social OOC contact wise.

- DC

What would Dante Alighieri do?

Having read Dante's Inferno, its not even remotely close to the same thing.

Knowing what you should do in some situations, doesn't make it possible, or prevent you from getting aced because you went left when you shoulda went right.

If you want to dispute my point, by all means. I could be wrong. But, I seriously don't think anyone has made it that far who wasn't led there by someone who already knew the route and strategy to get there.

That to me doesn't indicate that exploring wins. It indicates knowing the right people wins. I was never good at 'lesson of the day' tasks though so maybe I'm just missing where exploring beats cheating.

That cheating will not provide you. I don't think that the whole point of Hell is to make the beeline to Satan, exploring a side path in the first circle could be interesting too.

I defy you to make it to Satan without cheating or having anyone in your group that has cheated. Thats sorta my point. That area along with a few others forces you to rely on a group rather than an individual. Try to even organize a Hell trip when no one knows the bee-line path. I tried, I got told they'd rather wait til a qualified leader was around.

Honestly, its just lame. I don't personally care a lot, but it sticks in my craw. Thats why I like a lot of other areas better, like Kteng's. Solo exploring areas I'm cool with, since then its just a matter of effort. I think large large group areas however, don't pan out like they should due to the whole unfortunate human factor.

>Try to even organize a Hell
>trip when no one knows the bee-line path. I tried, I got told
>they'd rather wait til a qualified leader was around.

It's too bad, really. I've found a lot of cool stuff over the years in the first half or so of Hell that I've either not seen other people bother with, or not seen people bother with or get lately. Regens and are seriously some of the least of it.

You really can get a lot done with a small group, let's say 2-4 people, if it's a pretty well built team and/or all the players are pretty PvE competent -- the kind of people you could take into the Maus with you and wouldn't expect to get you killed. That group isn't going to go on a pit fiend killing spree, but by the end of their trip they can have seen a lot of cool things and have a lot of cool loot. Probably more loot (quality of stuff per person) than the 12 person group will get, since they're not squabbling over as much stuff or stopping to get 93 sets of fulminator gauntlets.

>I think large large
>group areas however, don't pan out like they should due to the
>whole unfortunate human factor.

That's true to a degree, and moreso with the aging of some of the playerbase. It used to be there was a Hell trip going down just about every weekend, either Friday or Saturday night.

I learned from taking Hell trips and tried to do something different with the Silent Tower. There's a lot you can do solo. Yeah, you probably need a group if you want to kill an Archmage, but in most cases, only the leader needs to know the way, and following the leader in and fighting won't necessarily show you the way (exactly) or spoil all the tricks for you. There's also generally less time commitment to get a group there -- if you've done some exploring and want to take a crack at one of the big boys, it's realistic to round up a group and have them at your target in less than an hour in all cases.

That's not a knock on Hell -- I think it's cool that the game has at least one truly epic area like that, a top exploration/PvE challenge for players who seek it -- but I tried to provide some different opportunities.

First, man, good to know Fulminators are lim 93...

Second on PvE, can you give some advice on how to get better at it? It is something I am realizing i never really thought about. All the serious gear gathering I've ever done has been in a group, and when I hear about characters (talking about normal characters) doing certain things solo it boggles me

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

So we're talking, like, beating up NPCs and taking their lunch money and not, like, figuring out puzzles and stuff?

Beating them up and taking stuff, not looking at the bag inside the drawer inside the closet inside the wardrobe that you can only see with ironskin up on the full moon in the month of the wolf on the day of destruction or whatever.

Whats some good advice generally, for fighting big mobs solo?

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

For instance as an AP or a warrior, do you usually want the extra melee from dual wield, or the extra defense from a shield? Do you want to spend the time maelidicting them, or just go for damage?

Thats the sort of thing I am wondering. A good example might be people taking down the green dragon (weald) solo. Biggest thing I've ever really killed by myself is the Dracolich, and he is a ####cat.

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

>For instance as an AP or a warrior, do you usually want the
>extra melee from dual wield, or the extra defense from a
>shield? Do you want to spend the time maelidicting them, or
>just go for damage?

It depends. I'll usually favor dual wield over a shield because I'm usually more afraid of the spells something is casting, breath attacks, etc. than its pure melee.

Maledictions will usually come out, depending on the class. If I'm a shaman and fighting something that isn't immune to disease and will take me more than one run, you can bet plague will come out.

In a simple sense, you're trying to do as much damage as you can while not dying and taking as little damage as you can. You want to be able to get away from the NPC alive, and heal faster than it does while you're away. You can do that by maledicting the NPC so it doesn't regen as fast in many cases, and you can do that by just recovering that fast yourself, whether it's by class abilities, a slow scroll, making it to an NPC healer fast and heading back, etc.

Learn, probably the hard way, what your target can throw against you, and come ready for it. Say you're going to try to fight a shaman who also happens to rail you with lots of lightning damage now and then. Maybe you'd want to find something to make it bleed and slow its healing down a little if that's not part of your class abilities. Maybe you figure out by trial and error what kinds of weapons will do the most damage to it. Maybe you go and get a piece of armor that will help you resist lightning damage. Probably you go in with a plan for how you're going to deal with your standard maledictions like blindness, poison, plague, and how you're going to heal or recover mana fast between fights, and so on.

>Thats the sort of thing I am wondering. A good example might
>be people taking down the green dragon (weald) solo. Biggest
>thing I've ever really killed by myself is the Dracolich, and
>he is a ####cat.

Besides 'look at everything', 'think about the area/inhabitants holistically'. I guess I wonder just how much information, how many flags/attributes of mobs and areas, or hidden quests I don't know how to find.

I suspect that to exhaustively find all the quests a certain race/align/class character has available to them, I'd have to go walk through many areas every 5 levels or so. So then, I just have to play enough chars to cover each race/align/class to find all the possible challenging, supersecret quests available. But I realize I'm trying to be too exhaustive. Can I count on quests being offered to characters within the area's recommended levels? How about the 1-40, or ALL areas?

Also, I'm ruminating on how to apply the concept of lateral thinking to the "concrete" and limited actions a character of mine can make in a mud. Hrrrrmmmm.

>Besides 'look at everything', 'think about the
>area/inhabitants holistically'. I guess I wonder just how much
>information, how many flags/attributes of mobs and areas, or
>hidden quests I don't know how to find.

It's probably not quite as bad as you think.

My wild-ass guess is that 70% of the quests in the game skew to low levels. In this case I'll define that as 1-15. Most or all such quests are found either in hometown areas or in areas intended for low level characters.

Most quests will be offered to appropriate characters if they walk into the room with the NPC that offers the quest, or there'll be some kind of automatic tip-off that something is going on. There are, of course, exceptions, but most of them will either be in explore areas or areas where you could reasonably be expected to be doing a lot of searching in order to solve a quest which would fit the aforementioned mold.

All that being said, I found a quest with the last character I started (an NPC offered it to me as I walked in the room) that I never knew existed, so it's clear to me that I don't know everything.

>I suspect that to exhaustively find all the quests a certain
>race/align/class character has available to them, I'd have to
>go walk through many areas every 5 levels or so. So then, I
>just have to play enough chars to cover each race/align/class
>to find all the possible challenging, supersecret quests
>available. But I realize I'm trying to be too exhaustive. Can
>I count on quests being offered to characters within the
>area's recommended levels? How about the 1-40, or ALL areas?

I can think of one or two exceptions, but for the most part, yes.

The narrowest quests I can think of are of the form "this class only" and there aren't too many of those. You're more likely to see a quest for only people with a certain skill, and then the reward will be a boost to your percentage in that skill.

nt

You spend the next 500 hours with an explore character gathering preps, wands, explore area knowhow, and I'll spend the next 500 hours cheating my ass off to get the same info. At the end, we'll compare notes (in a I have 20 barrier sources vs you have 25 barrier sources sort of way) and see who came out on top. Not for nothing, but if this were in any way serious, I'd bet on myself. In fact, I'm fairly certain that 100 hours worth of cheating (at which point your explore character has just made it to hero) would net me about as much as your 500 hour character.

Staff willing, I'll make the sacrifice and go cheat happy, but don't blame me when I'm more successful... it's the nature of the beast that has been created.

>Having read Dante's Inferno, its not even remotely close to
>the same thing.

Eh, yes and no. Inferno isn't a set of maps, but there are a couple places where having read it can nudge you in the right direction. At least, it did for me.

I was more driving at that, figuring out the puzzles is one thing.

Not walking into a situation where your whole group dies is another. Knowing what you should be looking for is one thing. Knowing where it is/how to kill the guy with it/etc is another.

That was sorta what I was driving at, especially given the time constraints people have, I can't imagine how anyone would explore hell from scratch these days. I mean, killing some things alone can take you a long time, not to mention factoring in the deaths and healing and etc.

Great area. I just feel like I would have to get a dedicated permagroup together to do it "the right way".

You get what I'm driving at though. I'll probably take your advice and just limit my aspirations to thoroughly exploring the first few circles.

>So name a single hell group to make it to Satan that was led
>by someone who didn't already know how to get there?

The first one. I was leading it and I only knew the way about 2/3 of the way through.

>I don't think I can name one that made it
>past the 6th Circle.

Back in the day there definitely were. A lot of that knowledge has probably trickled down, now.

Although, at the same time, a lot about the way has changed over the years, too. Every repeat Hell explorer (myself included, repeatedly) has gotten partway down and discovered, oops, that doesn't work that way anymore.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Hell just seems so awesome, its a damn shame it feels like its hard as hell (har har) to do right anymore. Bleh, there should be a cabal dedicated to just exploring stuff :-P. No raiding, just exploring. I hate to say it, but Herald isn't it. Its just too...cuddly cutesy, and doesn't attract the right sorts of people.

Maybe not even make it a cabal, maybe make it a religion instead. With a tattoo that just kills everyone you fight, so as to entice powergamers to try for it .

Either way, I'd hate to see one of the without a doubt most awesome things about this game slip beyond the grasp of your typical Joe.

One thought:

You make the point that you don't want to "defang" the game by making stuff easier, and that that's part of the challenge, and that people should respect that by not posting walk-throughs or blatantely sharing information that the staff intends for players to gain through exploration.

That's all fine and dandy. However, we don't live in an ideal world, and it should be expected that not every player will act in the way he "should". The question, then, is whether the "ideal" system can function in an imperfect world.

Take the case of puzzles. Puzzles are meant to be challenging, and the value of their rewards is set accordingly. But if everybody knows the shortcut to completing a puzzle it ceases to be challenging, and the reward then becomes disparately valuable for the effort required.

Wands is another one. It's often stated that, when a player finds a wand, if he doesn't share that wand's location with others, then it's more likely to be there when he needs it. All true. However, it only takes one player discovering the same wand and circulating its location to ruin the supply for the "non-sharing" guy.

Problem is, I don't see any solution. I would call the current strategy "containment". That is to say, try to enforce rules, hand out in-game punishments, etc. in an attempt to create the ideal environment. But this is an imperfect solution at best, since it's impossible to achieve 100% enforcement. Another solution (which also has its problems) would be to remove "exploration-based" items that are disproportionately influential on a particular class's (or set of classes') success. Wands for mages, poison/trap ingredients for relevant thieves, etc.

Basically, this view would make it so the rewards of exploration are much less than they currently are, so it wouldn't really matter (game-play wise) whether the information were shared. Preps in general (other than stuff like flight) would have to be toned way down, so that a "fully prepped" character would enjoy a much smaller advantage over a non-prepped character than they currently do today.

Note: I'm not saying I support this kind of change, just thinking out loud.

This was posted by Graham on Dio's and I thought it should be read here as well. He cannot post it for some reason. Anyway, this does not necessarily reflect my opinions

I'll state the broader issue more clearly: When I think of issues that legitimately threaten CF's longevity, the number one issue by a wide margin is staff burnout. The game requires a tremendous amount of energy to maintain and improve, and I'm absolutely convinced that if all staff were hitting on all cylinders all the time, every other problem would disappear with a quickness.
---------------
Perhaps you should stop all the work on non-value add work that is a boon to the most anal of players and a complete turn-off to the more average players.
ie.Wands, preps etc.
------------------
Others just want recognition or notoriety, and aren't willing or able to generate it through exceptional play, so they resort to childish, short-sighted behavior, like spreading rumors (true or false, doesn't seem to matter), spamming, or trolling.
------------------
Your attempts to constantly malign players who speak the truth, just one you dislike is truly galling. It's like calling people "unpatriotic" for disagreeing with you. Rumours aren't rumours if they are true.
-------------------
The real shame is that the players we love, those who generate a positive experience for themselves, the staff, and the other players tend to get pummeled on the forums.
-------------------
Speak up, defend them - a positive experience for themselves and others doesn't just have to be about agreeing with you. People do disagree with you for the good of the game. Please, someday, realise that.
--------------------
How many imms do we have? How many routinely involve themselves in public discussions?

(It's not a time issue for many people- I hear from nearly every member of the staff through more private channels on a regular basis.)

So why do you ban/discourage imms from talking on the likes of dioxides if you have such support for free flowing discussion. No, you'd rather have any discussion in your court where you can delete each and every message you fear. That's why we'll never have public discussion.

Most of this has already been covered, but:

So why do you ban/discourage imms from talking on the likes of dioxides if you have such support for free flowing discussion.

If I'm going to discuss CF, I'll do it in a place where trolls are short-lived and accountability is higher. We've tried the unofficial forums experiment before we had our own forums, and all it did was burn people out dealing with the usual suspects. Anyone who thinks it would be a barrel of hugs if we started duplicating our efforts on two forums clearly hasn't read the archives that far back.

Here, we can have discussions with our responsible players. There's any number of threads where players disagree with staff (scroll down the front page of Gameplay on any given day), and so long as they do it in a reasonable and mature manner, that discussion continues. It's when Ranty McPotShot shows up that we moderate matters.

Generally speaking, the number of people banned from these forums hovers around six. People tend to make a ton of noise upon departure, so it might seem like we're banning people left and right, but that's the median: six, maybe ranging from 4 to 8. This forum is an open discussion among all members of the CF community except six or so. If you're on that list, you made a large number of poor judgement calls. I'm not aware of anyone who was banned "for one post", even though that's the usual martyr's cry.

I don't believe that unmoderated "free flowing" discussion is inherently best, or even desirable, on the Internet. (This is especially due to Internet Tough Guy syndrome, coupled with issues related to anonymity and accountability.) Most people don't-- serious, productive discussion (academic, legal, political, etc.) overwhelmingly takes place in formats with some boundaries, rules, etc. People disagree all the time, since if everyone agreed on the matter, why are you having a discussion about it?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Somewhere in this thread it explains that some of the imms just don't post here because of the maligned attitude. This guy is one of those bad eggs. To put it into perspective, here is someone who is an expert on everything regarding a subject, but has never spent any time studying the subject from the expert manuals. All he has done is come to his own conclusions based upon assumptions he is making from an uneducated side. Would you listen to a person who is giving you medical advice because he saw it on an episode of ER, or would you rather talk to the doctor who has been trained to give you the advice?

Long before I became an immortal, I was one of the guys doing the leading into hell. Considering that I was leading folks like Graatch, Challen, Chris Warren and a few others, I have a pretty good idea that there weren't any imms with us. And if you go to Scarab's page, I was in the group that first killed Dispater and made it to the 6th Circle of Hell. My hanging out buddies and my characters included guys like Admiral, Juggernaut, Santa, Able, Killmore and quite a few others. Yes, I was one of YOU! I still am. The difference is that I wanted to give back to the game. I wanted to see for myself if what some of these players who seemed to know everything was true or not. I learned long ago that if you want to have a valid opinion, know what you are talking about first. I went in with an open mind so that I could form my own opinions on who was doing what. That was three years ago. I am in the know now. I have seen behind the green curtain. I have read the books and learned what this game is about. After three years, my opinion is this: CF is the best mud in the world because of the staff and the players. But, if you think that a few bad apples who are not in the know, have not been behind the green curtain and have not read the books are the ones you should believe, then you are going to be frustrated playing it.



>This was posted by Graham on Dio's and I thought it should be
>read here as well. He cannot post it for some reason. Anyway,
>this does not necessarily reflect my opinions
>
>I'll state the broader issue more clearly: When I think of
>issues that legitimately threaten CF's longevity, the number
>one issue by a wide margin is staff burnout. The game requires
>a tremendous amount of energy to maintain and improve, and I'm
>absolutely convinced that if all staff were hitting on all
>cylinders all the time, every other problem would disappear
>with a quickness.
>---------------
>Perhaps you should stop all the work on non-value add work
>that is a boon to the most anal of players and a complete
>turn-off to the more average players.
>ie.Wands, preps etc.

All of the work done is a value-add. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.
>------------------
>Others just want recognition or notoriety, and aren't willing
>or able to generate it through exceptional play, so they
>resort to childish, short-sighted behavior, like spreading
>rumors (true or false, doesn't seem to matter), spamming, or
>trolling.
>------------------
>Your attempts to constantly malign players who speak the
>truth, just one you dislike is truly galling. It's like
>calling people "unpatriotic" for disagreeing with you. Rumours
>aren't rumours if they are true.

The only players who are constantly maligned are those who are experts of everything they know nothing about.
>-------------------
>The real shame is that the players we love, those who generate
>a positive experience for themselves, the staff, and the other
>players tend to get pummeled on the forums.
>-------------------
>Speak up, defend them - a positive experience for themselves
>and others doesn't just have to be about agreeing with you.
>People do disagree with you for the good of the game. Please,
>someday, realise that.

Things are done by committee. When you point a finger at Valg, you are pretty much pointing it at the entire staff. And from reading posts from you and people like you, let me be one to say, you really don't have a clue.
>--------------------
>How many imms do we have? How many routinely involve
>themselves in public discussions?
>
> It's not a time issue for many people- I hear from nearly
>every member of the staff through more private channels on a
>regular basis.)
>
>So why do you ban/discourage imms from talking on the likes of
>dioxides if you have such support for free flowing discussion.
>No, you'd rather have any discussion in your court where you
>can delete each and every message you fear. That's why we'll
>never have public discussion.
That is simple. We aren't going to be dragged into a conversation with some of the silly posts that occur there.

I noticed one point on here that I happen to agree with - that the fact that because wand/prep locations are kept secret, it gives all the advantages to players who have the OOC lists and all the disadvantages to players without OOC connections into the game. Anyone want to comment on that? I'm curious to know the staff position on resolving this imbalance.

Chances are, if you got your prep from an OOC list you aren't the only one. Once these things are shared they tend to be widely shared. Except for non-limited preps, of which there are fewer and fewer (at least the big ones: damage reduction and haste) widely shared info isn't as beneficial as you might imagine since it is pretty hard to get.

The value of having a little known prep spot, especially wands, is substantially greater than having an OOC list that's been passed around for the last five years.

I have to admit, getting through this entire post nearly gave me a headache. I *think* you were trying to say that we're using limited knowledge to compensate for completely unbalanced gear?

In part, limited knowledge DOES compensate for powerful gear. If everyone could get everything, then it stands to reason that nothing would be more or less powerful then anything else. If people had enough knowledge about Silent Tower to walk through it like it's the Eastern Road, then nothing in Silent Tower would be any better then what you could find on, say, the Eastern Road. That's an over-simplification, since I'm not factoring in the raw difficulty of the mobs involved, but you get the idea.

Restricting the OOC flow of advanced information also serves to reward the people that do it the way it was intended, in the game. If we opened the doors and let every bit of info out OOC, that would just make the OOC part mandatory for everyone. If you explored and found some unique things through hard work, wouldn't you be pissed if someone else promptly posted that info on the forums?

All of that aside, we're only really up-tight about area-explores, of which there are only a handful in the entire game, and wands. There's also nothing preventing you from asking for help finding wands in-character.

Did you ever consider that maybe all those wand places you keep finding empty... are empty because they've been passed around OOC to everyone and their mother, which is in fact the same way YOU found them? Even if you found them legitimately exploring, I would think you would be pissed that others have gained the knowledge via OOC means and negated all your hard work, rather then coming here advocating less restrictions on OOC information exchanges.

Sorry, rambling reply to a rambling post. Hope that helps!

Aarn?

p.s. Not to be rude, but is english your second language? If it is, that's not bad, good effort. If english is your first language, good lord man, take some writing classes and proof read your work.

Yes, english is my second language. But I can write a lot better than that I guess, I just rambled on because I was on the phone during most of it and what I wanted to say changed somewhat. I hope this reply is more understandable.

I'm not saying open the doors completely, I'm still ok with area explore and quests being somewhat secret. But as I tried to say, area explores that are extremely hard and based on puzzles that are usually so hard that progress is often only made through cheating.

First group through hell consisted of only imms and people followed when info leaked out. First char with eq from Archmages in Silent was Iunna I believe and second was Cabdru? Other people have just butted their heads against the archmages and failed to my knowledge. A lot of people are solving it by basing their knowledge on textfiles that are being sent through AIM.

About the wands:
Yes, they might be empty because they are common knowledge among those that pass around info but that does not really matter, does it? Those that pass around the wands will still know a lot of spots and have monopoly on the wands. I can only lose on NOT trying to find a nice list.

To sum up. You are trying to make cf a job that you need to spend an amazing time on to compete with the best. Because the best have in 90% of the cases learned atleast parts of their knowledge through OOC means.

>First group through hell consisted of only imms

Well, no. Moving on...

>and people followed when info leaked out.

Nothing against you personally, but this is a character I played in, what, 96-98 and I've talked about this 50 times and I'm still having to explain/defend it? We're talking about a character I made during the first Clinton administration here.

I'd been down to Hell as just a member of the group a bunch of times with Sranu/Jarlandra and crew. Those guys had the way as far as the 7th circle figured out. To this day, I don't know how anyone figured out the 1st-2nd circle transition, but you know? The only significant puzzle between what those guys knew and making it all the way is the 7->8 transition. There's a method to Scarabaeus' madness, and not too surprisingly, that transition follows the same pattern of the previous 6 transitions. Come to think of it, there's a non-intuitive piece of it, but only if you haven't read Dante.

I don't know, I just don't think managing to solve one puzzle after other people showed the way by solving several harder puzzles first is that big of an accomplishment. I don't doubt that if Sranu and crew hadn't bailed to try their own hand at starting a MUD that they'd have beat me to it by months.

>First char with eq from
>Archmages in Silent was Iunna I believe and second was Cabdru?

God, no. Not even the first this year.

Ok, I might have gone too much on rumors and for that I apologize. And I really did not want to bash you imms for cheating, that was not the intention of the post.

But generally I doubt those first groups were completely done IC, imm or not. I mean what are the odds that a group without any previous knowledge or OOC connections actually makes it through all of Hell? I find it terribly unlikely so most exploration groups just seem groups that gets dragged fast through the circles to get some eq.

For the Silent remark I apologize then. I just had not heard of anyone getting eq from an Archmage. But I still would love to see the area somewhat more "balanced" with perhaps not that hard punishments and perhaps lift the aura of secrecy some? I know people are SO hesitating to talk about silent even IC because they think they are breaking some rule and that it will be changed. Wonderful area though and I hope you take this the right way and not like I'm trying to bash you as a player or area writer. Just want to put another perspective on things and how they could be viewed.

>But generally I doubt those first groups were completely done
>IC, imm or not. I mean what are the odds that a group without
>any previous knowledge or OOC connections actually makes it
>through all of Hell?

Oh, I absolutely was using knowledge from previous characters to lead the first 2/3 or so of that Hell trip. I won't deny that.

What I will point out is that was completely the standard at the time to do things that way.

Along similar lines, if you go back far enough, the staff did absolutely participate in mortal permagroups. It was only after a few years of having to team up with guys like Cador and Twist to compete with the other perma factions in the game that we started to say, "You know, maybe it shouldn't be this way. Maybe you shouldn't need to know 2-5 other people who play CF when you do to compete."

Hey, I do remember the perma groups. I remember as a semi newbie when a friend in my newbie perma yelled "Help come fast! I'm stunned by tamuela and palan and yagar are spelling me up!" over the computer lab. We did not have a chance, hehe. I applaud the busting of permas like that.

I just wanted a discussion if the areas we explore have adapted to that change or not? Perhaps they have and I'm wrong, I just wanted a discussion on the subject. I did not want to bash anyone even if my sucky grasp of the english language makes my words harder than intended.

Just want to say again that I do love the areas you created and I really don't want to bash you. You have often been a very reasonable imm and given good answer to for example legacy questions instead of just "read the helpfile".

Mostly my annoyance came from small things like gold sources, wands, secret newbie eq etc.


EDIT Hehe, ok. That was some serious weird english there. I hope you understand anyway.

Can anyone besides Nepenthe do everything that Cabdru accomplished?

And a sidenote question: Is there any other class capable of doing what Cabdru did solo?



Exploring parties aren't just formed anymore these days. At least, it is very seldom. For the individual player who doesn't have any contact outside of the game besides moderated official and unofficial forums, it is a much tougher game. And that doesn't even add in the extra difficulty for said individual player who has taken up a particular cabal, or a support class that would need others to explore better, etc. etc.

Personally, I fall under the individual player category, and it has taken me years to figure things out or get information here and there. Slowly but surely, my knowledge is accumulating. And with the more I learn, the more fun CF becomes, actually. It's just disheartening that I, and probably the rest of the playerbase, won't ever have the knowledge an Immortal possibly could.

A bit of a tangent from where your post was headed, sorry. Addendum: I think all the secrecy of CF can be lame, when taken so overboard. I still don't play mages because wands are too competitive, and I've only found two wands and a ton of empty spaces where they probably should be.

If you have been to certain explore areas it is highly unlikely, has anyone else even seen the Vivimancer? But hrm this thread should not be about Cabdru as it will be tons of whining and deleted posts.

With the falling playerbase fewer and fewer large exploring parties are formed I think, and for example every trip to hell uses old knowledge I assume. Because as stated before, getting to second circle from first is retarded.

I remember how posts on dios got deleted because they contained ids of fine leather...fine ####ing leather. What the hell is wrong with people. Who cares about that they come from small quests. This might be the work of anal vips though that pretty much works against why dios was started back when glimo was the board.

And about the wands, heh I've found several due to me liking to explore a lot. But again, there are some empty desks etc that have been empty for the last uhm 4 years or so and I've looked from time to time. Perhaps they just does not contain anything or I'm unlucky.

Everyone talks about all this vast IMM knowledge, but I too refrain
from mage classes because I am clueless as to where ABS are hidden.


Believe that or not, but it's the truth.



G.

I'll second that. I remember brawling with Grurk all the time when he was a mortal, and I don't think other than a friendly invoker or healer he was ever protected, even when he was the one hunting me.

Damn I miss Optomkiptum.

Why do I keep deleting characters that are so much fun? I miss Ritur even more...


Yhorian.

nt

nt

.