I suspect this won't be very popular so I will first try to protect myself from being torn apart mercilessly through a series of disclaimers. Hopefully, after that I will only be torn apart mercifully.

Disclaimer 1. What I write here is my personal opinion. I don't claim to be the voice of the playerbase.

Disclaimer 2. I do not try to persuade anyone to do something about it rigth away. I just want to let you know what I think. You don't have to care about it, but if, just in case, you do, please take it into account.

Disclaimer 3. I will use rangers an an example, but the post is not about rangers. I can provide examples from other areas as well if rangers are not enough. I have finally figured some of the things I mention below (though not all of them), so it is not a request for answers either.

Disclaimer 4. CF is a great game regardless of what I write below and I still enjoy playing it. IMMs do a great job with the features and especially with the communications to the players recently.

Assumption. IMM players (especially those who have been IMMs for long periods of time) cannot think the same way as players. You have information about game mechanics that you obtained either explicitly looking at the code or through white knowledge (which is similar to white noise, only more useful). You cannot un-learn that information. And many of you don't remember how exactly it was to not have it. There's nothing wrong with it, it just happens to be so.

Statement. Standard class skills and spells vaguely explained in the helpfiles are often unreasonably difficult to figure out.

Now to several examples that (hopefully) illustrate that statement.

I was poisoned and used bloodletting with my marshdweller ranger. The duration of the poison hasn't changed and the damage I was taking hasn't changed either. But it does SOMETHING, right? If not that, then what? Not clear from the helpfile.

Please note that with the reduced amount of players that we currently have it is more difficult to hold experiments that involve more than one player. Moreover, it's not even always obvious from the helpfile what the correct experiemnt should be.

It took me several months to figure out that draw breath didn't help against inhaled poisons, just because I couln't find a thief to try it with. Santa Zulg knows how it ended, but it certainly wasn't easy. What ELSE did you guys meant when you wrote that it was more useful than just going underwater, I have no idea.

I first tried brutal rush with mobs. Me wielding different weapons, them wielding different weapons or no weapons. I noticed no difference. Hmm, maybe it's like assassinate, only working in PK?

Warpaint is another pain. It does something else in addition to the morale effect. Great. What exactly it is, and what are the situation when it is worth it to undress, only the coders know. And they will bring that knowledge to the grave with them.

With my reasonably scarce playing hours, I couldn't figure out if smear mud helps against, say, spinebreaker. I just couldn't gather my goodie ranger, an orc willing to use spinebreaker, and righ weather or terrain conditions together in one place.

I know that I don't enjoy experimenting a lot (people are different, and some of them, like me, don't enjoy experimenting a lot).

Having tried things, I get to ask other players. If I can't observe any difference myself, I tend to believe what other people say. Which often has nothing in common with the reality because in fact they couldn't observe any difference either.

One other point is that if there is not enough specific information about a skill, it's hard for the players to figure out if the implementation is buggy. I still remember nightgaunts that killed people and then brought their ghosts to the conjurer. And the staff stating as one voice that nightgaunts were working as designed.

What I found is that I can play new class (or, to be entirely accurate, new class kit) for over a hundred hours and still not know well enough how certain skills work. I don't feel comfortable with that. I don't know if I am the only person having that problem. If you all say the problem is in me, I'll have to believe that.

Conclusion. I would like to have regular class skills documented more clearly. Stuff like "Arvam's tickle" or "Valguarnera's hug" found by the brave explorers or given as the reward to outstanding roleplayers can, and should, stay mysterious, but a regular level 30 skill or spell should not. CF is a very complicated game even if you know the rules.

Thanks! And sorry about the length of the post.

'Contrarywise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'

Warpaint - low morale is the only thing I've noticed. However, harassing a group of people for a couple of rounds to intimidate then with warpaint will sometimes be worth it. One of the things I remember from posts past is a reduced learning rate for low morale, which is why a good-neutral-evil threesome doesn't learn together.

Brutal Rush - I've played around a lot with it. I don't know. Does it help when you're not tanking? I noticed maybe one or two more dodgings, but I'm still overall mystified.

Draw Breath - In all actuality, it should protect you against anything requiring breathing. I don't know if it does. It should protect against druid spores, invoker water spells, inhaled poisons, and the like. These things are relatively small niche skills you don't encounter too often so a protection against them would be nice. Also, it would give people a reason to still be a storm giant ranger.

I agree with everything you say. There should be less mystery for class-specific skills. The help file for just about any other older class is precise in detail in what its uses are. So, because a class set is new, people shouldn't know what the skills do? It shouldn't be a secret. Wand locations, quest skills, etc, those are the secrets.

Speaking from my own perspective only:

1) I sometimes like designing or coding new skills etc., but I almost never like writing helpfiles.

Vagueness isn't always by design so much as by sloth.

2) The person who writes the helpfile for a skill and the person who codes the skill are probably both working from the same (by nature, imprecise) design writeup for the skill, but probably aren't the same person.

So, other times, vagueness isn't always by design so much as by different interpretations or miscommunication.

3) I didn't code everything, I don't have time to play everything, and I certainly don't read every helpfile, so sometimes I won't even know where a helpfile is particularly lacking.

I couldn't have told you which way draw breath worked either, and I don't know what bloodletting does either. I don't know how brutal rush works with mobs.

And so sometimes vagueness isn't always by design so much as by ignorance among us, too.

No promises, but if a particular helpfile is particularly bad, bring it up and we'll talk about it. Although I hate helpfile writing I've cleared up a few somewhat before, such as the templar's defense helpfiles.

Re: warpaint, it pretty much is just a morale penalty affect. However, that said, there are a handful of moderately obnoxious low-morale problems that only show up in conjunction with stuff like demoralize or warpaint. I.e. you'd need to have both one of those handful of affects going AND have a low enough morale to fail to trust an ally to do a trust thing to you.

Sometime, when you feel like it, you might want to update the help on the following:

- brutal rush
- draw breath (what else other than water breathing)
- warpaint
- savage ambush with natural weapons
- problems that rangers have in the marshes

If I see more stuff I will bring it up, I am just upable to create a full list of anything from the first attempt.

'Contrarywise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'

>- draw breath (what else other than water breathing)

If you tried using draw breath in different places/environments you would also know that it reduces the effects of smoke. For example if you ever ranked in the Forest of Nowhere you know how annoying the smoke can be there. If you use draw breath the smoke effects and damage are reduced. I'm pretty sure it would help against other smoke effects as well. Possibly that caverndweller skill. It is also possible that it either protects or helps against trapper thief traps. At least it did for me. There are possibly other things it would help against that I can think of but for now that's it.

Brutal rush is sickly powerful against certain mobs.

In conjunction with a single piece of healing gear, you can kill mobs that you absolutely have no business killing.

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