From the discussion on whether double ranking would be good or not, some thoughts about current cf offering sprung to mind, so here you have it.

Extra exp alone would not be enough to increase my interest in cf a lot, but it would be a signal of a positive change.

We could consider the value cf adds to its customers (players) as the fun derived from playing. Two distinct ways to achieve competitive advantage are price advantage and differentiation advantage, where the prior aims to create value at a lower price compared to competition and the latter creates more value (for a similar price). CF has for years now been on the path of trying to achieve differentiation advantage but failed to take into account the market. While increasing differentiation advantage by offering a wide and highly versatile environment for PK and exploration, the costs of acquiring this value has increased (as expected). By costs I mean the opportunity cost of time spent playing vs. time spent doing something else. In a market of high demand this would be an excellent strategy, when the increased value delivery will result in increased willingness to pay. However, cf operates in a declining market with a decreasing demand due to a constant decrease of time to spend.

With a declining demand, CF's cost-value ratio has blown out of proportion, where an ever increasing portion of the target segment simply is not willing to pay the price. To balance this, cf should be shifting it's strategy from a more value pov to an equal value cheaper strategy. There's a simple three step way of executing such a strategy. The first step in taking action with this new strategy is to identify core benefits which bring customers to CF. In a simplistic fashion three key elements can be identified: roleplay, PvP encounters, PvE encounters. The customers have varying preferances between the previous three. For a more scientific view these could be broken down into smaller segments, but for the sake of discussion and decision making it's not necessary. Second phase of the plan would be to make straight up improvements to the cost-reward ratio by decreasing the time it takes to achieve wanted benefits. This is done by identifying unproductive (from customer side perspective) phases in the cf value chain, and reducing them or altering them to create more value. Once a satisfying amount of changes have been made, it's time to move on to phase 3. Phase three is the hardest part, since it includes making compromises. The key aspect is to identify product features that do add value, but for a too high price. These aspects need to be either changed to create more value or reduce the cost of acquiring said features, and if neither can be done reasonably, removed.

At the current state there is a common misconception at work. Tons of people say hey, it's ok ranking/practice/whatever is slow, I'm not in a rush. But fast ranking and taking your time to hero is NOT mutually exclusive. Decreasing the work involved in ranking is not the same thing as forcing everyone to rank up asap. It just means that during the periods someone ranks, he's getting more done in a shorter span of time. Remember, the people who do continue to play, clearly have made the decision that the value gained is worth the cost. But this group of people is certainly constantly dwindling.

To re-emphasize my point, the number 1 reason for player retention seems to be lack of time. I have never heard anyone say they quit playing because of lack of content. Hell, I can say with 100% confidence there is not a single player who has seen and experienced every single area/race/class/piece of eq available. Yet most new changes are related to adding content.

And I'm not really hot for making huge changes, since they tend to go overboard or have unexpected effects. It's better to make small changes here and there all working towards a clear cut, commonly accepted customer oriented goal in mind. This is the very benefit of having a value creation strategy.

Now, the new question to be asked when making improvements should not be how to make PK more balanced, or how to make Thera more immersive, it should be how to decrease the time spent to be competitive in PK environment, or how to make the immersiveness of CF more easily accessible.

To provide some practical examples:

30% ranking boost:
No direct effects to RP/PvE/PvP
Reduces time spent to achieve benefits
Paces up RP encounters (roughly same amount of meaningfull RP is done during 1h and 4h conversation, after introductions and group hookup + first 30 mins of ranking things get repetitive)
+ Phase 2

30% skill learning boost:
Reduces downtime of characters who need masteries
Reduces time spent to achieve level playing field
Slightly reduces realism since younger characters are often quite equal to older characters
+ Phase 2 since value reduction is greatly outweighed by cost reduction

Shortening roads (say 20%):
Reduction in time taken to reach PvE and PvP
Slight alterations in PvP balance with skills such as summon being affected
Slight reduction in immersiveness and realism of Thera
+ Phase 3 since it is a positive tradeoff between cost and value

Do not get me wrong here, I'm not saying CF is bad, or everything should be thrown out into the trash can, but instead that due to arduous work done by the imm staff, CF has grown into an immersive fantasy rpg world, that has an outstanding value proposition, but as it is, cost - reward ratio has spiraled into a direction unwanted by the target audience.

Since the target segment of CF are players with limited time on their hands, a good way of assessing the productivity of a change made could be considering it from the pov of an old player. Just think, would this change work towards making cf a more appealing offer to him? I know for sure I'd be more inclined to seriously return if the CF staff openly announced plans to make cf easier, while trying not to much of it's appeal, where as a major substance update such as addition of a new class would have a lesser impact.

Where I think you have a lot of merit is in your discussions around 'shrinking' Thera.

When the roads went in in the first place, I thought it was a great idea. Everyone was stepping on everyone else, and the world was so small that most people ended up fighting at the Crossroads between Galadon and New Thalos. At the time of course, during the high points of people logging in you'd get 100+ people on characters.

Soon, more and more areas expanded and we are where we are today. I think this is something that the Imms are already aware of. Many Hero Imms are tasked with revamping stuff vs. creating new content, and I think we'll get to the point where old content is going to get dropped off the map. The unfortunate part of this of course is that content doesn't create itself, or revamp itself, or even delete itself. All of that is work that needs to be done in safe ways so that the whole MUD doesn't come crashing down. Meaning: Time, and effort.

I would certainly like to see Thera as a world act in the same way that item limits do, expand as the playerbase expands, shrink as the playerbase shrinks. However, I have no idea how that could even be possible.

I've been playing this game off and on since 1994 so I have a bit of history with going/coming back a few times, and therefore potentially some perspective on this. (Keep in mind, the whole time I've had two hero characters).

The one main thing I disagree with your post is, is that you're effectively saying that you want to make it easier to turn the page to the next chapter.

Effectively: "I'm currently level 15, and I don't want to be anymore because I've done X, so now I want to get to 16 in Y time". Now, X could mean 'nothing', or it could mean 'explored that area' or 'pked 10 people'. Those are decisions that we make daily as we're playing. Either we take time out from ranking to do one thing or another, join a cabal, pk, rp, explore, etc etc. However, I feel that by messing with the 'Y' of that above equation, you're opening up so many things that would seriously be too hard to control. Why put experience in there at all in that case, just give users the LEVELUP command?

For my $$, the reason that 'Y' exists is because CF is attempting to simulate the journey, not just provide the destination. The idea is that you're attempting to portray someone's psyche and doing that with 'Y' being 0 effectively cannot be done. (I realize that noone has suggested ranking be automatic, but why not take it to it's extreme?) You're left with everyone making it to hero with no time spent having fleshed out their character. The reason that Hero should be looked at as a reward is that 'Y' is Time spent, work, effort, and at the end of it it's like climbing a mountain, you turn around, wipe the sweat off your brow and enjoy the view.

If there is no sweat, then you're just sitting on some molehill, and the view is not nearly as spectactular. Again, my opinion here, but I remember when levelling was harder than it is today (warning: Geezer talk), for instance, when all roads led to Shadar which was asking to get mobkilled or PKed. Ranking now is much easier than it was 'way back when'. Unfortunately, who that doesn't service is the person that only has 'Fun' because they make it to hero.

Now, if we get to the point where everyone left playing is simply a vet of this game and in that category, where you create a character and that journey described above doesn't matter, then great, start the game at 51 with all skills at 100% and play the game like Unreal Tourney. I don't think we're there yet, judging by the newbie questions that get asked on the newbie channel a lot. So: Keep levelling rates where they're at today is my vote.

Although I don't think we have any idea how much demand there is to play CF until there is a reasonable effort made at creating new players.

It becomes strategically more important to focus efforts on retaining existing customers before seeking out new ones. The best promotions cf has ever had is when one player goes out and gets his buddies to give it a shot, so If you make it more fun for those who stay they will do more to bring new players in.

And lets be honest, this game is far to complicated for someone without a buddy to reasonably expect to come, compete, and stay without an experienced guiding hand showing them the ropes.

I would contend that it's not overly difficult to simultaneously do a great job with improved retention (thereby increasing referral) and the attraction of new players.

I would also agree that the game has gotten a bit too complicated for the "unfriended" newbie. Not overwhelmingly so, but enough so that something should probably be done to mitigate that.

I know that if I were a brand new player and had not gotten my start years ago sitting in the computer lab next to my friend, I would not have stayed or gotten others involved with this game. It's a good game, yes, but the learning curve is steep for people unprepared for it. What little wand knowledge I had has gone the way of the dodo since they revamped it and I no longer have the time to dedicate to finding them again. Which means I play classes that do not rely heavily on them, or at all if I can and I avoid PK because, quite frankly, people like me are going to lose without that knowledge.

With the pbase having less time on their hands, things need to stop being so time consuming. Sleek wands is one thing to consider here. Some people do have the time/interest in finding their sleek rods and having barrier on a stick, but is it really fair and supportive towards a level playing field to have something as strong as 40% damage reduction available as a perk for grinding out the easter egg hunt for a sleek black rod? I really like having dam redux preps in the game, since they
- offer another tactical aspect into the pk game
- give characters the possibility to power up for tough fights (and no, that's not every fight)

but for crying out loud, either make them easier to find and a part of class balance, or keep them as they are, and make them weaker in potence, dropping them outside of game balance consideration

I would like to see barrier toned down (quite a lot). Alternatively, I'd like to see barrier as a skill that "unimproves" the more it is used. So those using it profligately will find that it isn't really worthwhile after a while.

The aim being to make people keep it for the harder fights.

That said, I don't like the idea of keeping it as is and then making them easy to find.

That is a really fascinating idea.

It's like in video games where you have a "super-move" that you can only do when you accumulate some amount of "energy". The energy slowly charges up as you go around doing things, then you "spend" it when you invoke the move.

Maybe there are other things you can do as well to juice your "energy meter" like killing another PC, taking a cabal item, etc.

So maybe mages have some sort of "dam redux meter" that slowly accumulates and that they can discharge whenever they want. Depending on the amount of juice in the meter, they get more or less dam redux. If you just used it 12 hours ago, maybe you only get the equivalent of shield. Etc.

(I'm not necessarily suggesting this be implemented...but it's interesting from a game play perspective.)

adsf

I think it will be remove tedious things from the game or lessen them while maintain the general line - the more you put into your char, the more you gain.

And I am totally agree with this:
"To re-emphasize my point, the number 1 reason for player retention seems to be lack of time. I have never heard anyone say they quit playing because of lack of content. Hell, I can say with 100% confidence there is not a single player who has seen and experienced every single area/race/class/piece of eq available. Yet most new changes are related to adding content."

The world is huge enough already except learning areas for high ranked evils.

Honestly, I think ranking hero range evils is fine. You get decent exp out of all the goodie spots, and even if the areas are fairly easy to thin down, I don't mind having to fight a bit here and there while ranking.

It has a great beat, but I can't dance to it.

The one thing you aren't taking into consideration is that a lot of the imm staff are losing interest as well. Look at the number of active mortals today compared to a year ago. Maybe that process needs to be revamped as well.