Your post for recap:
Point blank example - Arolin's character getting denied over rescue. Rescue has always worked that way and I don't really consider that a bug, but he was pretty much railed for exploiting it.

Specifically, exploiting it in tandem with his RL buddy, after the two of them had exhausted their warnings about permaing/etc. You're neglecting the fact that Arolin required cooperation, and where it came from.

Couple that with him describing it in advance on IRC as a bug exploit, and you have a clearer picture that he knew what we was doing. (We knew in advance that something was up, but not exactly what.) I don't get why people claim that Arolin was unfairly busted when he himself knew it was dirty. It's all revisionism.

--------------

First of all I wanted to point out that you offered no justification for using all the ST gear. Only pointing out how Arolin was a cheater, which is true and I think accepted by almost everyone.

On one hand we have a situation where there are a series of puzzles that maybe a hand full of people know the solution to and no one in that hand full knows all of the solutions in question. Then, the person who created the puzzles exploits that knowledge for immense in-game advantage is shady. On the other hand someone exploits the "By Design" lag on rescue in an OOC way to kill an uber-powerful character. It might not be QUITE as shady as OOC'ily exploiting the spirit of the rescue skill but it's still pretty dirty.

Both of those seem like obvious violation examples of the rule:

* Do not exploit Out-of-Character (OOC) mechanisms to create an advantage in the game. This includes cutting link or quitting to avoid consequences.

Please explain how "I wrote the area" is not an OOC mechanism.

Bear in mind that I am perfectly aware that some leniency must be made to the immortal staff regarding some information. No reasonable person is going to be pissed because an immortal's mort solved Simon's newbie quest. Solo-ing ST or Hell is another matter. I'm just curious what the official stance is from the immortal staff. There currently appears to be no line whatsoever which concerns a lot of players.

Ofcourse you're going to know the mechanics way better than anyone when you have 24/7 access to the code behind it and when a large portion of it is by your hand.

Let me give you an example:

I once programmed a (text) game that took me 4 hours to finish.

When I gave it to my friends to play they literally needed a month to finish it. The exact same game.

And that was when I was like 13 years old.

---

Ofcourse if you do:

IMM: create SuperProggedKillingWeapon

IMM: give SuperProggedKillingWeapon to mortal char

That would be lame cheating, but he didn't do anything like this.
(That I know, but I seriously doubt he would have even if he could)

---

Actually I'm amazed Nep can still have fun playing a mortal, with all the knowledge he has. With a tough game like CF, ignorance truely is bliss. To know every nook and little corner of the game would be extremely boring.

So big kudos to him for that.

"What is mind, don't matter. What is matter, nevermind!" - Homer J. Simpson.

I'm morbidly curious about where you think the 'line' should be.

I genuinely don't mean to be more condescending or offensive than is normal for me, but I feel like you're trying to theorize about what is or isn't appropriate at a level of playing the game far removed from your own. . . I get the same impression from your wand system posts also, so this isn't just a 'but this is me' thing.

I wrote a really long response to this but I'll shorten it to just the following. Whenever I (being a significantly less skilled player) see a Cabdru in the fields I think to myself "Damn, I want to be just like that guy!" I would say that wonderment and admiration is akin to a young boy wanting to be an astronaut. Then out comes the truth which is that the player had infite access to game mechanics and item locations. On top of that he waltzed through his own area to get himself uber-geared. I don't know how to put into perspective how disheartening that is to a player who admires the Cabdrus of Thera.

As for where the line should be? I dunno, maybe there shouldn't be a line. But to steal another poster's words, it just 'feels' rotten. Conversely, walking boots don't 'feel' rotten.

It was all good but the progging stuff that most people worried about was mostly from areas that nep did not write. One piece gave him a noticeable edge but its not common knowledge which it is and how it did, besides I don't think it ever came into play cause he had other abilities to accomplish the same thing he maintained.


truly the piece that made him uber was that axe that gave him such huge hp and dam, everything else was just icing on the cake.

That's just it, and why this kind of argument is so frustrating to try to refute. He doesn't know what it is or why it would be so overpowering -- he just has a vague sense of being wronged.

Le grande sigh.

I think the recent news about the Tour de France and steroids may be a helpful analogy. If I use steroids and win the Tour it's still a VERY difficult task but my 'win' is tainted by the fact that I 'cheated'. Only in this case instead of winning the Tour you 'won' CF and your 'steroids' are only legal for a small subsection of players. I think what you find frustrating is that I'm incapable of offering a solution. I agree, I find it frustrating as well. There really isn't a perfect solution. My only suggestion (note: still not really a 'solution') is to encourage information sharing from the immortal staff's morts. More explanation is in my other post.

Thanks for the objective and neutral-to-positive responses, they're greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Rade

I don't think that's a particularly good analogy. Closer would probably be something like if the winner of the Tour de France was the second cousin of one of the guys who picked the race route. You can't really explain how or why it isn't fair or appropriate in a rational way, but darn it, it sure looks dirty!

If that comes off a bit snarky, I'm sorry, but this whole conversation is well into that territory for me.

You doing it first.

I'm not going to argue I think it is kosher or not. I honestly don't know, as I don't understand silent well enough to know if pure coder knowledge would allow you to whup it up in there. An example is Aran-Gird. Regardless of how well you know the area, you still need to kill the tough mobs to get the gear. Because of the nature of silent, I think people who don't know the area well or haven't been there somewhat justifiably wonder if you didn't just waltz up to the biomancer and 'invoke unobtrusive bit of refuse with no obvious link to the biomancer and in a completely different area' and he fell over dead.

I rather suspect that what you actually did was build up a huge axe, get a bunch of healing and curative gear, and go in and steamroll some mobs who simply didnt have enough HP and damage redux to deal with a guy who throws the damage equivalent 5 deathblows a round. There are enough people who know how to get to those mobs that, given a 200 dam 2k hp fire giant I think could also have done what you did. Before I played my last paladin I didn't get it, but I killed mobs solo with him that had ripped apart semi decent groups of mine, so I came to appreciate what a simple melee beast of a character with the ability to heal/cure himself and dam redux could do.

All that said, if some of the things that you did are never repeated before CF is shut down, I think that does comment on the difficulty level of silent, i.e it is designed too tough, but it doesn't neccessarily reflect on your integrity as a player, if that makes sense.

I was irritated about it, but then I posted on the CONSPIRACY ANSWERS thread you and Sebeok did about some stuff in Ysigrath that irritated me, and you were totally willing to admit your mistake in design there.

>>> For Rade.

If you think it impossible to do what Cabdru did, I suggest this: Make a two handed Paladin and make getting temperance central to your RP (though this is whoring, it is doable.) Get a 65 dam suit and go fight a mob who you always thought was a disgusting badass. This should only take you about 100 hours, and it will be fun in the process! Then, imagine having an order of magnitude more raw power at your disposal inre : mob killing, and then ask yourself the same questions you asked yourself before you started this thread.

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

Again I'll try to be more clear on my point. There's a difference between cheating and not playing on a level playing field. What you did isn't cheating but you also didn't accomplish it on a level playing field. Your analogy is perhaps better than mine, except you would've been the one who picked the route.

He tends to run maverick chars, solo power houses. If you really think about it though thats a double edged sword. If he ran a nep char with team evil or team goodie mentality that prevails in cf he would absolutely #### everything up as far as balance is concerned, so this is the upside to his playing style. Downside ofcourse is that no one gets to soak up any kind of knowledge from him, tactical pk type stuff or questy area eq stype stuff. If there was some way to find a balance between maverick and everyone's info/quest/pk encyclopedia I'd like for nep consider it.

Other big thing was that he wouldnt admit to his chars, it would grate me to no end (I still don't know why it did). That seems to be changing but I don't think dissecting every little thing about his chars is gonna make him want to own up to his chars. Trust me in the end you want a cf in which people like nep play morts than the other alternative. Cf requires constant tinkering to maintain gameplay balance an imm staff out of touch with gameplay is gonna help no one.

That being said I still want to know how the hell you mastered excision with cabdru. After 108 hours of pretty much constant use of wands through excision my fire ap's excision was 78%

Other big thing was that he wouldnt admit to his chars, it would grate me to no end (I still don't know why it did). That seems to be changing but I don't think dissecting every little thing about his chars is gonna make him want to own up to his chars.

It's a little more than that, because he's being accused (in this thread and elsewhere) of anything he could have done, with zero evidence to those claims. Read Dwoggurd's last 10 or so accusations (prechecking locations of gear with immcommands, changing a successful Excision from 3 rounds to 2 well in advance of the character in order to benefit that character, Cabdru's role prize was exceptional compared to other contestants, etc.), pick though the other misinformation and distortion (the role contest was judged by his fiancee, etc.), etc.

It's bad enough to have to defend everything you did do with the character, like adventuring in an area you wrote. (Again, not illegal to do.) Nep probably tinkers with every class once a year, and now that's evidence he was 'setting up' his next character? Do we have to bring the role contest back to 2001 standard and simply give out 1 train to the top two contestants, so that people won't complain about the 'unequal' prizes among the 6+ winners?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>It's a little more than that, because he's being accused (in
>this thread and elsewhere) of anything he could have
>done, with zero evidence to those claims. Read Dwoggurd's
>last 10 or so accusations (prechecking locations of gear with
>immcommands, changing a successful Excision from 3
>rounds to 2 well in advance of the character in order to
>benefit that character, Cabdru's role prize was exceptional
>compared to other contestants, etc.), pick though the other
>misinformation and distortion (the role contest was judged by
>his fiancee, etc.), etc.

By the way, which of those claims is false?
Zero evidence doesn't automatically means it's false.
After all, his role prize for 4th place was better than mine for 1st place (Not that I demand more). But that's not the stuff I would like to discuss here. If you want to discuss role contest prizes, open another thread.

Funny thing is that you didn't even realize that excision and fire giants inventory capacity was changed until I announced that in this thread. Even more, your first asnwer to it was (as usual) something like "you're on crack".

>It's bad enough to have to defend everything you did do
>with the character, like adventuring in an area you wrote.
> Again, not illegal to do.)

The problem with his area is that is it too hard for mortals to solve/walk around. In practice that means only he has an access to "special" kind of uber gear storage in game.
Moreover, he has done that before with one of other his areas (the area with "defiance").
Well, even at low levels Cabdru was walking around with a certain healing sleeves from one of his low level areas after the quest to get them was changed (For example, I don't know how to get them anymore)
Said that, I don't truly believe it is a good idea to close areas for its authors. So I can't propose a good solution to this dilemma other that using comon sense.
Hell, if I would wrote an area I would like to walk around it too.

... That reads backwards on your forehead:

Correlation != Causation

...but you totally destroyed your own point, in my opinion, with this argument:

>The problem with his area is that is it too hard for mortals
>to solve/walk around. In practice that means only he has an
>access to "special" kind of uber gear storage in game.
>Moreover, he has done that before with one of other his areas
> the area with "defiance").


So the Kuo-toa Lair is too hard for mortals to solve/walk around? Funny, I've seen two diametrically opposed characters have eq from there and fighting each other, so I'm pretty sure BOTH aren't Nep. Or is it not too hard for mortals anymore, because several mortals have figured it out now? So Nep has to wait until other people can get all the eq in his area until he gets to go there?


FYI: I was one of the first chars with all green eq from the Forest of Nowhere. I also had the lance from the Black Knight first. And a bloody orb. I also had some of the mithril eq from Aridhol, and leveled one of my paladins in Shadar Logoth (with that sweet-ass mithril eq) the first day it came out. I must be a cheater too.

The risk is a lot less in those areas than ST. Most people are going to eat some especially nasty deaths while they learn about ST. Nep never had to go through that, and it makes people feel slighted that they will spend hours looking around, a couple of con and probably a fair bit of their gear just to get the smallest items from ST. Sure, he spent hours writing it, and I'm not saying he shouldn't be able to go there, but it's also far from a level playing field. I don't think there's ever going to be a way to deal with that uneven playing field when it comes to imms and areas they write, and that frankly sucks.

Nep wrote that area way back when I was still playing like 6 mortals at a time. I think my first mortal to find it was my gnome dagger spec that was in Entropy (Gnibbkribble, I think). (Side note, I rolled the char because Nep made some comment about how "Twist is so good at warriors, he could even make gnome dagger viable." He overestimated my abilities - gnome dagger spec sucked back then.)

I found a couple neat things in the Tower, but nothing even remotely "ubergear". Just some of the stuff people see right away when they get in.

That was in like...1999. He rolled Cabdru in what...2005? And didn't go INTO ST until well into the char's life (once he had a beefy axe already built up)? Is 6 years not enough time to give mortaldom-at-large a chance to figure out the secrets before he goes in?

Another point - perhaps some of Nep's other mortals DID go into the Tower, and DID get smacked around, prior to Cabdru. I don't know if this is the case or not, but if they did, does that make Cabdru "ok"? I know of several mortal players who know a lot about ST (way more than I do) and seem to learn more with each char.

I didn't ever see Cabdru in action. I don't know what went on. I largely try to stay out of the conversations about him. But to say that Nep can't get ST stuff with any mortal of his after the area's been open for getting-close-to ten years? That's just silly.

While I appreciate your line of reasoning, are you really going to compare spiky green gear with "instantly kills priests" items?

He doesn't need to, because that's not from an area I have anything to do with.

At the time, the only place a good aligned char could get anything that was +2 dam and not limited was FoN. Neutrals/evils had red dragon gear. So essentially we're talking about "an item" that was +10 or so dam (as many, many goods including my own would shuck the +1 dam blue dragon eq and put on green eq).

So it was pretty good.

Insta-kill-priests good? Not hardly. But like Nep said, that's not from an area he wrote.

Eh, well you can justify it all you want. I think point blank the issue boils down to taking things you learn as an Imp and using it to smack the crap out of players. IMHO, being able to stomp people using uber game knowledge gained from putting in a lot of free coding hours isn't such a terrible thing, however it definately doesn't strike me as remotely "fair".

Then again, there's tons of things in CF that I wouldn't coin as "fair competition". At the end of the day its trivial. I think the only reason we're even still talking about this is that Nep and ilk won't concede the huge advantage they have over others. In a way, its like being born into the Trump family and not conceding you've got a fiscal advantage over everyone else.

Lets face it, whether its by choice or involuntary, having full access to source code + area files + snoop + being part of balance/coding discussion for quests, powers, items, etc is a pretty damn huge advantage in a game that's so centered around knowledge.

I'll concede without a fight that I have a lot of advantanges over most of the people who play the game; however, I think most of that advantage comes from having played the game forever, whereas you seem to think otherwise.

To put some perspective on it, if you've played CF less than ten years, I played dozens of characters, spent hundreds of hours in Hell, fought thousands of PKs before you even started playing. The advantages of that kind of experience are many, varied, and not always small.

I've gotten the sleeves (relatively) recently. No one told me how.

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

>Zero evidence doesn't automatically means it's false.

No, but it does mean it's probably silly to talk about. We also don't have proof that I'm not the real killer O.J. Simpson is looking for.

>After all, his role prize for 4th place was better than mine
>for 1st place (Not that I demand more). But that's not the
>stuff I would like to discuss here. If you want to discuss
>role contest prizes, open another thread.

Role contest prizes are generally better since that era, though I disagree that it's a better prize. You don't see it that way and there's not really much more to say about that.

>>Zero evidence doesn't automatically means it's false.

>No, but it does mean it's probably silly to talk about.

But it never gets old to troll about Nepenthe and Valg

>Role contest prizes are generally better since that era,
>though I disagree that it's a better prize. You don't see it
>that way and there's not really much more to say about that.

My prize was cooler from RP point of view, something unique, not just a faceless int. But in this thread I refer to PK boost mostly.

>My prize was cooler from RP point of view, something unique,
>not just a faceless int. But in this thread I refer to PK
>boost mostly.

Right. Still better than +1 int, in my opinion.

Going forward anyone that wins a role contest gets +1 int. Screw quest forms, screw quest spells, +1 int for everyone.

But it never gets old to troll about Nepenthe and Valg

As I understand it, trolls are vulnerable to ban. You might want to find a new hobby.

My prize was cooler from RP point of view, something unique, not just a faceless int. But in this thread I refer to PK boost mostly.

I think everyone is referring to both. "+1 int" is neither particularly impressive relative to other rewards given nor particularly unique.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Unfortunately, that line of thinking doesn't reflect what actually happened.

Cabdru didn't go get anything from the Tower until well past the last Unholy Blessing control, all but something like 1-5 charges of that in one continuous keeping the same weapon streak. (I can think of one Tower item he had earlier, this being a weapon that's usually maxed because a lot of people know how to get it. It was obtained from a PK.)

Ditto most of the Hell gear, actually. Rings are an exception. People who actually understand what they are and what has to be done to get them can probably confirm that as a non-major feat that lots of people who aren't me have done solo.

If you would like to make a character with similar PK success and can't, you're going to need to find a different excuse.

That not many do it solo at 40.
And, also, you would like to have a good feeling that they are IN before you go down there at 40 to meet your unavoidable death. Not many of us would want to waste constitution because they can be just stored on a random gearwhore and you can't really locate.
That is where "owhere" is very helpful

>That not many do it solo at 40.
>And, also, you would like to have a good feeling that they are
>IN before you go down there at 40 to meet your unavoidable
>death. Not many of us would want to waste constitution because
>they can be just stored on a random gearwhore and you can't
>really locate.

Eh. I hadn't seen them in a while, and there is no way I'm ever going to manage to condeath another character. I just don't have the attention span for it.

Seeing if I can get down there alive is most of the fun of it. Actually getting the gear or not is just a way of keeping score.

>That is where "owhere" is very helpful

I don't think we actually have that in our version of ROM.

Here's the deal. I don't think you're a cheater, I just don't think you play on a level playing field with Joe mudder off the streets. In reality you can't, the mere idea of it seems insane to me. I want you to enjoy the game. I want you to roll up another badass and rape your PK range from time to time. I fully recognize that there's no good solution that puts you on a level playing field. You'd have to artificially limit yourself which is retarded.

Something you might consider in order to mitigate that is sharing more information IC (as we mere mortals are encouraged to do). Try roles which are more outgoing with respect to 'secret' knowledge. Snag a couple of obviously less skilled but still reliable people and show them how to solve the puzzles as you (IC) solve them yourself. Obviously I have no way of knowing to what extent you shared this type of information in game. I can say it would be unbelievably exciting to have had a Cabdru lead me through even the first circle of hell. And obviously you can't be a giant merry-go-round walking anyone who wants through the ST. And it's entirely possible that there's a whole slew of people you gave information to but again the unfortunate way of the world is that you don't see a boat load of posts about it. You never hear about the immortal who rolled up a herald and started spilling the beans about KTeng's lab to the 6 characters sitting by the fireplace at the time. Instead you hear about how an immortal rolled a Cabdru and power-played their way into the hall of fame. Be your own positive press!

The pain of my casual vocabulary combined lack of inflection over the internet makes my tone seem worse that it really should. I assume most people in game figure out who I am based mostly on this. Below, for instance I was trying to convey happiness with getting a definite response with my "Thanks!" but re-reading it I see plainly that it would appear sarcastic. So if any of this seems in that tone, please ignore it.

I've learned a ton about stuff from Nep, typically IC, and generally it's stuff he learned IC himself.

I know what you're going to say - sure Twist, he did that for you but he doesn't for anyone else. But that's simply untrue, he's done it for many others. I've seen it from a mortal perspective and from an immortal one (via snoop, etc.)

While yes, one part of me would love it if Nep rolled up a char that would walk me through ST so all my future mortals would know all the secrets, another part would be disappointed that I didn't get to figure out those secrets.

I didn't address it initially, largely because it's been covered so many times. The rule is that imms are free to adventure in their own areas. Any quests/challenges/whatever must have solutions that can be discovered IC. If any staff member was obtaining stuff from any area by means not available to players, that's an immediate problem. The one time that was noted during my tenure on staff, the person in question was denied immediately.

So what's your solution? Don't allow imms to touch any of their own areas? For how long? Why does it matter that Nepenthe wrote that area, when as an Implementor he can read any area file, just like I can?

Please explain how "I wrote the area" is not an OOC mechanism.

It is, akin to how your character knows about an area from your previous play experience, or how Zulghinlour know exactly how Pincer works. We don't forbid staff from using skills or spells they worked on.

The word you're omitting from the rule is 'exploit', and I don't consider adventuring in an area you wrote to be exploiting anything.

At the end of the day, the game runs better because we have staff that regularly play the game. I don't plan on endorsing any plan that forces the staff to abstain from a majority of the activities a player will find fun, and as far as I'm concerned, this issue was discussed plenty already and I don't see any need for a policy change.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

That's really what I was looking for. That the official policy is that there is no real line. I won't bother bringing it up any more.

Thanks for the response!

That's really what I was looking for. That the official policy is that there is no real line. I won't bother bringing it up any more.


You sound like a complete asshole right there, just to let you know.

You're right, and while I won't detract from what I feel is the accuracy of my previous statement I will apologize for it's tone. It wasn't really intended to be assholish.

would be to make things reasonably accessible to players.

Having in game clues is not enough if it requires a 200 iq or just dumb blind luck to decipher said clues. In my opinion the clues need to reasonably clear, concise, precise, or whatever to lead to said item. The key here is how reasonable are the clues?

Sure you can have clues, but no normal person would EVER decipher them, who has no foreknowledge of what he is looking for. One could never decipher said clues without having a vague idea of where the clues lead or what he is looking for. When you high up imms evaluate the area, try to put yourself in a player's place, with no foreknowledge of items. See if someone with zero previous knowledge can find said item based on clues without knowing where the clues lead.

You ask what the solution is?
Reasonableness of quest, clues, indicators to said item. If only 1 other person found the item besides IMM X then its a problem. If you cannot correctly evaluate a certain quest or set of clues because you have foreknowledge and say "Well, given X, then Y is obvious". Y is only obvious if you know in advance what that Y is. See how many players actually find the item and it will tell you if the area is reasonably accessible or if it requires special knowledge or just dumb luck.

You really cant stop imms from visiting their own areas and its hard to have what Rade is asking for. If item becomes available to other exploring players than its no longer an issue.