Which was absolutely awesome and none of this should in any way be considered a criticism of that effort (I don't think it will read that way, but just covering my bases in advance). I also want to sincerely thank the Imm Staff for taking the time and putting in the effort to make it happen.

Now, on to my thoughts and conclusions/suggestions I came to:

1) The game has slowed down over the years.

Even with 100 players, it still didn't feel quite a fast paced (likely related to later points) as it used to. Some of this is my own increased knowledge/experience/skill, but some is not. Fast paced, non-stop pk intense action is part of what drew me into CF in the first place, and 100 players online illustrated (to me) just how far from that initial place we are today.

2) The game is WAY too big.

I'm not sure how many rooms are in Thera, but I'm guessing 10K wouldn't be too far off the mark. That means even with 100 players online, each character still has ~100 rooms all to themselves... That is too many. Was there a ton of action in FoN, Eastern, etc? Absolutely. However, I was still able to find a quiet corner to recover/practice skills/whatever with little to no risk of discovery, even with 30 people in my pk range of which a significant percentage were actively hunting.

Suggestion: Try an event where everyone gets perma 'eyes of the eagle' to see if being able to use where across areas makes Carrion Fields a bit more "Carrion" and a little less "Fields"

Suggestion: Make summon work on increased area (like above)

Suggestion: Make nightgaunt take victims at 75% health... This one I'm less sold on, but generally more ability to track, bring back, or otherwise magically transport people to each other could help shrink Thera.

Suggestion: Make mv (regen?) work differently based on PK adrenaline or not. Basically if you are PK adrenaline, mv could work the way it does now, but if not, you basically regen like crazy to make it easier to move about and check areas without having to stop and rest (especially true at low levels). Maybe only up to 50% (or something) so that people aren't always at 100% mv.

3) We, as a community, have significantly undervalued low-investment characters.

I don't know the demographics of the night of 100 players, but I do know that while quite a few people just logged on there existing characters (I'm sure hero range was full of folks), there was a *lot* of low level action. People rolling up characters, knowing with double xp and 50% learning bonus they could get into the action quickly and without being at a huge disadvantage over someone who put in 30 hours by level 15.

Long-lived characters are awesome, and we all enjoy having a hero/villain that is around for some time, but I believe the life-blood of CF is truly the 11-30th level characters with a half-dozen or dozen hours in, no role, no real purpose except to get out there and see what happens. I know that some people can basically choose a character they want to play and then play it out forever. I also know I am not one of those people. I like to try a few things until I find something that feels right and then go with it. However, with quests, edge points, skills, etc. that I feel I *need* to do something with right away I end up spending significant amounts of time at low levels basically not contributing to the overall game, just building a character to the point I want to play it.

Suggestion: Make learning rates higher as a baseline.

I find few things more frustrating than skills/spells/sups/songs that fail when I need them to succeed. Sometimes this causes my death, but more often it means I'm simply aborting my attempt and waiting 5 minutes to try again. If I knew my skills were going to go up as fast as they do with 50% learning bonus, I'd be much less likely to try to spam defenses at 15 or any of the other anti-social behavior my lowbies tend to end up doing because I don't want to hit level 30 with 75% parry or whatever.

Suggestion: Less low-level quests (or changes to them).

There are, for instance, usually 2 and sometimes as many as 5 low-level quests that I feel almost obligated to do because the reward is good enough to justify the time. Some of these are the kill 70 of X quests, which take a significant amount of time to complete, during which time it makes little sense to engage with other characters. If the rewards were nerfed, or the quests was much easier to complete (fewer kills), or if it was harder/impossible to complete solo (big mob at the end) but easy with a group I think that would be an improvement. For instance if Sutton's quests required only say, 20 kills, but then a large, mean, deadly version came after you once you had those 20, it might make sense to do the quests as a group.

There is also the issue of who gets credit for kills on these quests when doing it as a group, which should be everyone, but seems to be killing blow or most damage or something.

4) Empowerment sucks as a system.

This is related to the above slightly, and is a little more harsh than necessary, but the number of people who rolled healers, shamans, druids, and paladins because they knew they could get empowered and start mixing it up, really should be a strong indicator that empowerment isn't just a barrier to playing one of these classes. It is a significant barrier to even *trying* to play these classes. Speaking personally, I've found it very difficult in the past and generally unrewarding to put in half a work week of my time (or more if I'm unlucky, but never less) into a character where my only goal is to get "approval" to play the character/build I'm interested in.

Looking back on it, if I had realized just how easy it was going to be on the night of 100 players, I would have rolled up dozens or more empowerment class characters just to get juiced so I could keep them around for later playing. Again, for me personally, I would rather have to keep 50 level 1's with empowerment from getting auto-deleted than put significant work in a character only to find out the build isn't what I thought it would be, or my immortal and my vision of the character are totally at odds, or that I can't get a hold of an Imm or whatever. I can't tell you how many druids I've attempted only to get hung up on getting empowered (or even spoken to) and then let die the slow death of auto-deletion when I realize the character I want to play isn't going to happen.

Suggestion: Easy in, easy out on empowerment.

Make religions more flexible, or make it more clear what a religion is actually about and what the expectations of a follower are, then just juice people watch them to see if you need to lay the smack down or guide them into a better path or whatever. I enjoy Immteraction in general, but empowerment has led me to the place where I can't bring myself to play empowered character because I can't seem to get empowered in a manner that lets me actually play the game or play the character I'm interested. Instead I feel like I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for a job interview and hoping I don't #### it up.

Suggestion: Get rid of spheres.

They are a stupid RP device and I have always hated them. It has become increasingly unclear to me whether my characters are supposed to know their sphere or not. Significant numbers of spheres are always uncovered. Not every character makes sense in a sphere. I could go on, but suffice to say I hate the sphere system and find it confining and not at all helpful.

Suggestion: Expand the greenways idea into others spaces. Make these the have a role, get empowered path.

Sure you might not get a tattoo, but at least you can actually play a character and see if they fit your playstyle before putting in so much work.

5) We as a community take ourselves and our "leet" RP way too seriously.

One of the things I noticed during night of 100 players was that the RP atmosphere felt significantly more relaxed. Yes, there was a bit of OOC going on. Yes, the newbie channel looked a bit like a chat channel at times, but not overly so. And for all of that, I didn't feel like the game was ruined, or that I couldn't RP, or that people were constantly OOC. I don't want to see cb being using to ask for algebra help again any more than the next person, but that doesn't mean all OOC has no place. I've said it before in regards to helpfiles, getting and keeping people logged in should always be a priority.

Suggestion: Relax the policing of the newbie channel.

Discussions (about mechanics or whatever) tend to get shut down. Arguments should be, but if someone is looking for help on how a sword spec plays... maybe that should be allowed. The newbie channel was significantly more of what would usually be considered "inappropriate" chatter on night of 100 players than I've ever seen, but it didn't seem to be hurting anyone as far as I could tell.

Suggestion: Find a way for players to discuss things (in an OOC fashion) in game.

I'm not 100% sold on this one, but wouldn't the Imm Staff rather have what amounts to an OOC channel in game (where it can be monitored) than have people doing that over IRC? Wouldn't it be better to have discussions while logged in to CF than through a forum, or facebook, or AIM? I'm not sure, really, but I think it bears scrutiny.

Sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully at least some of this sparks some interest/ideas.

1. I've been around forever myself and I'm not sure i agree about the pace of PK, what I would say is that with lower numbers comes a harder time trying to find people to hunt and with mostly vets playing it only compounds the issue as vets know how to survive which usually means only becoming available to PK when the odds are more even/in your favor.

2. I'm not sure most of your sugggestions are any good. It would imho be OP in its effects (especially the nightgaunts and area summon) however I believe there are things in place if certain restrictions were lifted would both improve certain classes overall utility while making this issue easier. for example Why not allow assassins to mark abd locate mark on out of range players? Abilites like that which are restricted to within range being taken to out of range also would help alot while improving class utility without giving a serious PK advantage to anyone in the way being to summon from an an entire area would.

3. I think the addition of these occassional skill/exp bonuses is fine. People spam-prac because most people who nplay this game are at the very least borderline OCD and there is something about 99% that frustrates the hell out of us. In actual reality CF in comparison to similar games is rather easy to rank and perfect your required spells/skills in. There are only 51 levels after all in a world where you have many games with 100th level characters.


4. I do agree with a more easy-in, easy-out empowerment system. In addition you should be able to have more than one 'set' choice for a Imm. We have a 'pantheon' but we don't treat our Gods as a proper pantheon. We treat them as nation-states meaning you have to 'belong' to a specific nation instead of how old-style polytheistic religions worked where a person could pray to say Ares when they were at War for help, pray to Dionysus when they wanted to get their party on, and pray to whoever was in charge of crops when there was a drought for rain.

To this end I wouldn't mind actually having more spheres than one. Never made sense to me that Imms have three speheres typically but the players can only pick one to represent themselves. Id like to be able to pick threee myself damnit.

5. Sorry, but i totally disagree here. I think RP is the 'core' of what brings people back to CF. Sure PK is good but you can get PK anywhere. What I think brings people back to CF is that there is literally no other game I have ever played but CF where the bplayerbase is so dedicated to staying in character. Even the folks who don't care about RP at least TRY to not go overboard with OOC comments and such. anything that would feed an
OOC habit in my opinion would kill this game.

Most of these ideas I'm not a fan of to be honest. Reason being all the hunting ones favor roaming gangbangs. Summon + bash is pretty good as is, without boosting summon and where to make hiding from summon+bash impossible.

On the empowerment thing, empowerment is very easy. It's not the actual empowerment, I think that is a problem, it's getting in touch in game with the Imm you're looking for, if you don't pick an Imm that has regular times. And also, having to write a full level 1 role for a char you might not even enjoy playing. Not sure how to fix that.

I'd rank up on travelers west of galadon until I got to bash, lightning bolt, or ambush depending on if I was playing a warrior, anti-paladin, or ranger. Then with the gold I had gotten, I'd pay someone to get me a suit of red dragon and cloaks of nightwing, and nightmare blade (I could hit for big letter damage at that point!).

Then I would pk everything I saw and full loot every corpse I found to upgrade my red dragon gear (like red dragon gear could be improved on) until someone pk'd and fulled me. Then I'd delete, re-roll, and do it over again, and it was awesome.

My favorite memory during this time period was some AP I had just cast lightning bolt on when he was gushing in the galadon guild telling me how I was going to get kicked out of the legion and the guild I was trying to figure out how that would work.

Simply because of the amount of bitching that ensues, along with people lacking balls.

Example: Getting inducted into battle is a joke, but no matter how bad you are you've got at LEAST 100 hours in the cabal before you get kicked.

Because that has not been commensurate with my experience.

I'll agree that it's too hard to get booted from Battle, but I think you're off base about the induction process.

Every time I see commander or drillmaster on, I know that a village app tag is going to vanish and spellbane is going to kick my ass.

This is often on lvl 15 characters I've seen on for maybe a few hours total.

Get one mage kill, take village app.

How many mage kills you got?

12. I killed made up name1,2,3,4 etc

induct wood elf/minotaur/dwarf battle berserker

edit: its not fire giant, its wood elf now.

Upon induction, the average BattleRager is level 26 and has 46 hours. The average, as well as PK wins, tends to be higher with stealth classes.

Also, Battle leaders can see if an Applicant has zero MPKs, a few, quite a few, many, etc, though not the exact number.

After that they expect to see "a few" then, for a lowbie.

The lvl 26 is extremely surprising to me, but 46 hrs might account for giants spam practicing.

You continue to look more and more foolish as you rage against the machine (in your eyes) that is Battle.

I thought STSF was way OP while I played Hunsobo. Then I played a few, and now I know how to fight against them (still get my ass kicked a fair amount, but not because they are OP - generally because I did something wrong).

I always hated how OP bards were against me when I played Woldrun. Then I played Hanord and got my face raped by some Villagers (though I still maintain that bards are very powerful against ragers in general and giant ragers specifically).

I could go on but you and I both know you'll never commit to playing a BattleRager "like you mean it." By that I mean you'll be doing it solely to quiet people like me, but not actually giving the character a chance.

Yes and no to this...

Getting inducted into battle is from my experience one of the easiest to one of the hardest inductions in the game. It truly varies in a way most other cabals do not vary in terms of their induction times.

The reason for this is that there is no 'set' method for being inducted into battle. By 'set' I mean that for example with empire (easy) you just get someone to give you the bloodoath, you donate, and bada bing bada boom you are in.

Battle on the other hand depends upon the Commander/Drillmaster and what they decide the requirements are and the specific people you go to for reccomendations and their requirements which will vary.

I know when I give inductions its all about time of day. You may catch me with plenty of sleep and in an RP mood in which case your interview is going to be at least an hour long or you may get me just wanting to get the interview over and get a pass based on any little thing you do to give you the go ahead. I've never NOT given someone a reccomendation because at the end of the day its a game.

Thing is...I'm unzure what you mean by 'its a joke' because honestly most cabals are relatively speaking about the same degree of ease/hardness for induction except for consistently easy ones like empire and tribunal.

Scion - can be the hardest induction and I'd say overall...pretty consistently hard to be inducted due to their small competitive size and for folks not necessarily knowing the secret handshake if that even exists for scion. Just look at Zhenyen - went from not inducting hardly anyone to a flood of scions now. Timing can be everything.

Empire/Tribunal both are consistenly easy to get into, empire by design and Tribunal because everything you need to be inducted into Tribunal is in the help files under 'help laws'plus a little common sense and area knowledge.

Outlander (ive only played one) seems from observation to be like Battle - its all about your timing and luck with reccomendations and your particular branch leader's expectations.

So anyways, i dont think when comparing Battle inductions to any other cabals inductions there is truly any difference. Every cabals induction process is fairly easy to hard depending on timing except as mentioned Scion who tends to be consitently hard.