The State of CF: Why you're wrong, he's wrong, she's wrong, and I'm right.

Big Fixes

Change how IMMdom works

IMMs should be given duties that best suit their abilities.

Change the way IMM status is given

Anyone remember the episode of Star Trek: TNG where the Enterprise encounters a probe which zaps Picard with a beam that forces him to live through an entire lifetime in 20 minutes, learning the history of a long-extinct civilization?

Maybe the analogy is a bit obtuse, but the bottom line is that there is no new generation of text-based gamers. That said, CF has some very unique feathers in its cap at this point:

1) A largely unique, reasonably compelling world and mythos
2) 20 years of operation with a thriving community (how many games have had that for 3 years? 5?)
3) A huge and brilliantly balanced class and skill system
4) A cabal system that has provided a consistent engine for conflict and fun
5) A committed staff that has continuously evolved and improved the game

So how to make all these things truly survive and last? Port it to a 3-D game. 3-D MOBA style combat in a large persistent world, with all of CF's rules, modified where necessary to accommodate the new platform.

This is obviously a massive undertaking that would require time and (most likely) a fair bit of capital. I'm curious to know what others/Imms think about the idea in general, though. I personally don't think it's completely infeasible.

Let's get a Kickstarter going! Or, approach a game designer like From (Dark Souls 2) and sell the IP. Let's 'git 'er done!

If I wanted to play a graphical game I would already do so.

I chose cf because resource isn't wasted on graphics.

In short, I think it would boost numbers a lot, but possibly lose much of the existing player base.

It's really simple and pleasant. It has an old charm.

The chronological post sequencing is nice, but the look of the forum is simply outdated. The website can still look simple while not looking outdated.

Regardless, the forum software is old and vulnerable.

I mean people like me don't have to actually play. We can know what goes on in CF just by browsing forums. Why bother logging in?

In all seriousness part of the reason I've pushed updating helpfiles is that fundamentally you want the focus of the games to be in the game. Spend some time making it so that people have all the tools/information they need at their fingertips *in game* and all of a sudden when you have the itch to know what level assassins get poisonsmoke because you think you have found an awesome strategy for killing level 11 elves... you log into the game and find out.

Don't fix forums. Advertise if you want, but fundamentally anything that isn't focused on getting people to actually log in to carrionfields.com 9999 (or whatever the actual address is... fix that #### btw) is wasted effort. Facebook friends aren't people in my PK range. I can't RP with forum posts. No cabal accepts twitter recommendations.

Play the game. Make it a game that rewards you for playing.

Or accept that this is exactly the game that we have collectively worked toward and that it is exactly what we actually want, regardless of the amount of complaining we might do.

it's what draws me in when i'm not playing and keeps me interested when things are slow

example: Ooglarr logs, twist logs

Some sort of epic fight replay feature that you could go a view at a place in game? Would you still need forums?

Are you saying that CF's main problem is the difficulty of imming procedure and thus lack of adminstrators, rather than lack of players?

"Are you saying that CF's main problem is the difficulty of imming procedure"

Let's focus on that part, because "and thus lack of adminstrators, rather than lack of players?" is not at all the point I am trying to make.

So, "CF's main problem is the difficulty of imming". Close.

I will start by saying that I do not think there is a difficulty of IMMing as a set of procedures. Writing descriptions is trivial, as long as the descriptions aren't expected to be fantastic. Sending a note to IMMs saying you want to be a heroIMM is not difficult, either.

I also do not think CF's main problem is its lack of players.

A crude version of our hierarchy is, currently, IMPs -> IMMs -> Non-IMM players.

The IMPs are somewhat competent, except that it seems a lot of problems get stuck in the "we don't exactly know what would happen if we did that" stage. (If a solution to a problem is better than the current implementation, test the solution. Fix the better solution when issues arise with it, rather than leaving a sub-par "why break what works, even if what works sucks" solution.)

The IMMs... well, there are many issues here. Without touching on the IMM-drama, I can confidently say that we currently have unnecessary IMMs.

A question I would like an IMM/IMP to answer: How many active IMMs (per human, not per characters controlled by humans) do we have, versus about how many currently active characters? If you have access to such information, replace "active characters" with "active and unique IP addresses."

The next question would be: How do each of these IMMs uniquely and helpfully contribute? What do they do that is both functional and needed?

So, Dur, to make it clear,

As long as CF has IMMs that will interact with Thera and with CFers, the IMMs will act as the bridge between the world that the IMPs create and how players are immersed in it. If the bridge isn't stable, why would the player base be?

The main issue, according to me, is that the "staff" and its infrastructure are poorly constructed. Do I think fixing the problems with the IMMs will bring in more players? No. I do, however, think that leaving it as it is will assist in the fight to stop players from joining (or staying, for that matter).

Just to be sure I've answered everything, I do not think there is a lack of authority. We certainly have enough people in positions of authority. Do we have the right people for these positions? But... Do we even have the right positions to be filled?

is it spring already? This conversation's renewal is as good an indication as any calendar!

Just chill out and let it slide slowly into darkness. It's ok guys. Things come and go. In fifty years we can all tell our grandchildren about the world's greatest game that no one knew about and how we had PK records on it.

Beautifully said. I'm glad someone just said it like it was. I enjoy the hell out of this game and have been playing it for years, and I still cant make it through Organia in less than 10 minutes either, along with a whole host of other things. As a matter of fact if I didnt keep my own cheat sheet of item locations there is no way I could even compete on any level, as if I really do now, but I admit to seeing the sight and that it was a great source of knowledge for me when I was trying my first long lived mage for finding wands and preps, without it or someone actively showing me in game(not going to happen unless I do it for someone) I would have just been ground round for the seasoned vets or imms playing morts. I have and always will say I play for the RP, pk just comes along with it, and Im not scared of it Im just no good at it. Ill tangle here and there but I seldom play stright pkiller characters. That being said, everyone has a different play style. And everyone will always have different playstyles, but when the base is so low all those are a lot more compressed leading to much more conflict. As most people can likely tell whose who at point theyve been playing with or against them for so long. It just leads to ugly stuff. PS I have a marketing degree but everyone I try to sell on cf needs to have a computer in front of them right there to get it otherwise its almost tmi to try and explain at one time. Most people tune out or say it sounds like to much investment

Then if I have someone on the computer off my router with the same or similar ips then Im at risk of permaban for perma grouping and playing with someone together or multi charing or something

Nope, send us an email and make sure both characters are acting independently. You can certainly teach him, but if he is wandering in FoN and yells across the room for you to come kill that annoying ranger, you both better have a good in-char reason to do that prior to the occurrence and there had best be in game communication between you two. (It is also much more satisfying to kill people you know in the game.)

Made ya look

foo

This is a sweet sentiment, especially bashing on us balding, old people, but you need to face some facts:
- When CF started, dial-up was in the majority of homes. We live in a mobile and broadband world where PC games and mobile apps make up the majority (and the latter is growing) of user attention
- When I started playing MUDs, it was because the games in AOL Games sucked or my dial-up connection couldn't support it. That's no longer an issue.
- The playerbase has matured from CF's initial roots where new players could group and grow together and share in experiences. Less overall players now + more mature players means that there are less people able and willing to help newer players
- TheMudConnector.com - remember that? That used to be a modern website. Go visit it now. Go on, I'll wait. Looks like it got trapped in 2005, doesn't it? There aren't enough new players in the ecosystem to help to promote the experience.

So what is my main point? If you want CF to retain the playerbase it has, start catering to the mature players that have been here for many years. Make the experience easier for us. When more of us come back, more of us can help new people. Is it really fair for a new player trying to jump into PvP to compete against a 20-year vet? Maybe if there was more information available on game mechanic and secret locations of items, preps, weapons and armor the newer player has less of a learning curve.

I mean sure it's nice to look at your accomplishments and database of super secret quest and item info and make the claim that 'if you were a good vet you'd already have this info,' but if you really want to help CF, make it easier for every vet that already knows about CF to play it.

n/t

CF will never be able to get a measly 200 average players? Because it's a mud?

So I work in digital marketing and have some experience here. Unless CF partnered with the One Laptop Per Child foundation and supported multiple languages to allow the growing 3rd world audience to play, there isn't enough consumer attention to make a text-based game interesting. Younger consumers are brought up with mobile devices and sophisticated graphical gaming choices that make command prompt gaming obsolete.

In the rare event that a younger consumer wants to try a text-based game, there is no current implement in place by CF to help them find this MUD. There is no marketing budget or staff devoted to finding new players. There is no trade association or grouping of MUDs to pool together staff resources and create industry awareness initiatives. The staff volunteers their limited time and probably doesn't want to spend their own money on this stuff. The scraps of a Facebook page and Twitter account are not designed for new players, they're for vets. This not a criticism but an assessment on the state of affairs. Our own website and forums aren't even optimized for this generation's shorter attention spans.

So unless you actually have a plan on how to get new players involved in the game, and send a picture of you at a college campus handing out flyers, don't assume that getting new players is something that can be done with the flip of a switch.

there is a point to be made from a more refined version of his argument.

The potential for a high player base is there. There are things about CF that many people could like.

It's not up to the players entirely to spread the word about the game. Even if we did... what would a newcomer see? Years and years of people complaining about how things work.

So, we have people like Akresius who simply delete negativity so that new players do not see it. What does this do? It makes people angrier.

New players would come and see this battle between people who want to have their opinions heard get censored by people who think the anti-current-state is going to scare away new players (or, just as likely, people who get offended by posts and delete them saying that it's for the greater good of capturing new players).

That would turn me off from any game. A game that relies a lot on community involvement has a community where the community's higher-ups censor the community's lower-downs? No thanks, I'm out of here.

But, then... if we don't censor them, we have all the true morons posting filth and slander and so on. What a conundrum.

Or is it?

These people are posting a lot of this muck because of personal grievances with the IMMs, who typically share similar feelings towards the players. The IMMs have it in their power (and are suggested to commonly use such power) to further ostracize said player until the situation gets even worse... and worse... and worse... and then private forums are created specifically so people can do things to spite CF and its staff.

This reinforces my idea that the problem is with the staff - specifically how the staff is chosen and what they are chosen to do.

As for marketing, see: staff. You work in digital marketing. Why aren't you applying for a marketing related IMM position?

Probably because you can't, because the IMM system won't allow you.
(Of course, you might also simply not have time for it)

My area was going to be a bridge between the heart of the storm in sands of sorrow to the dwarf forest, or something.

So I had the opportunity to help the staff, but didn't have the time or enough desire to volunteer my time towards it.

I don't know anything about the IMP's motives and I can't imagine that you do either, so laying on libel isn't really adding anything constructive to this argument.

Do Imm's take liberties sometimes or cheat and give themselves and their alts and friends of alts extra benefits? Probably. Could be intentional, could just be someone figured out how to game the heartstrings of the decision makers. Welcome to the human condition and every real world experience ever, including job hiring and social grouping. Deal with it and don't expect a group of volunteers to hold themselves to a standard that you set because you have an unlucky roll of the Imm attenion dice.

I have not suggested anything about IMP motives.

I did mention something that Akresius has done, but he admitted to his reasoning for it.

This was not an accusation or a critical statement of Akresius. Rather, it was pointing out a side effect of what censorship can do, and partially what it is clearly doing with our community (partially, because I cannot objectively state that my 'new-player' scenario is happening, but I can objectively state that censorship is breeding contempt within our community (please do not confuse "censorship" with "opacity")).

You are also mentioning things that I have not brought up -- IMM cheating. I do not care if an IMM rolls a character and has fun with it, wrecking everyone because they know more about the game than we do and have the skill to make use of it. They should be allowed to play, just like everyone else. I do not consider this cheating.

Giving away info to their non-IMM friends, then complaining about information sharing is, however, a shining example of hypocrisy. Though, neither this topic nor its validity has been mentioned by me anywhere in this thread thusfar.

I would appreciate not being accused of things I am not doing or saying, or being responded to in a way that suggests I have different motives than what I have clearly stated.

"My area was going to be a bridge between the heart of the storm in sands of sorrow to the dwarf forest, or something.

So I had the opportunity to help the staff, but didn't have the time or enough desire to volunteer my time towards it."

Exactly. Why would you have the desire to volunteer towards that? It's not something you wanted to do. Let's say you did want to help with marketing CF from a staff-like position. You would have been deterred from that because of some task that just wasn't enticing (or even related in this scenario).

Throw all the weird, obscure puzzles at me you like. I'll eat them up.

If you say "Here are 25,000 rooms. In 3 of them are your funsticks, and they are hidden behind room description keywords and/or on mobs you may not be able to kill within your role in those rooms. GO!", then I assure you I will do just that. I don't play mages anymore because of that. I stick to melee classes so I don't have to bother going on the Grand Tour of Thera(tm) to find the ability to defend myself.

Nobody is going to keep returning to a game over and over again. Retaining vets is one thing, but it shouldn't be the main thing.

This is a sweet sentiment, especially bashing on us balding, old people, but you need to face some facts:
- When CF started, dial-up was in the majority of homes. We live in a mobile and broadband world where PC games and mobile apps make up the majority (and the latter is growing) of user attention

A fine fact. What's the point of it, though? That there are tons of people who want to play games, or that many of these games are not MUDs? The popularity of a game these days can probably boil down to a few factors. The two relevant that I can think of are:

- How good is the game's marketing?

- How enjoyable is the game?

Does CF have positive answers for either of these questions?

The rest of your post is concerned with retaining its current player base. I don't think that's an issue. You started playing MUDs because the games in AOL Games couldn't be supported by dial-up. Yet, here you are. I don't care if you play or not -- you're here. You care enough about CF to be on these forums, despite CF's state. If things change in a positive way, we get new players, and so on, I'd wager that you'd roll up another character (of course, this does assume that you don't play now. If you do, I think my argument for that case is rather intuitive).

Transparency won't "save" CF. It might retain some of the grumpy, older players... but it won't stop CF from failing. Once the mystery is completely taken away, people are going to start realizing that it wasn't obscure prep knowledge that cost them so many losses in PK -- it's their lack of skill.

In ways I cannot express, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see a horde of 100+ 19-23 year olds stomping the hell out of each other on Eastern. Look around. Do you see hordes of ANYONE? I remember raiding parties of 12-15 characters getting together and going after Empire. Now, that's half the online characters in the game at peak playtimes.

If you want those 19-23 year olds to join the game, go find them. If you have suggestions as to how us old people can help bring them on board or keep them here, by all means make them. I've bitch-ranked more newbie mages and thieves in the last year than I'd care to count, and answered tons of questions on the newbie channel. Most of the newbies that have said anything on their way out fall into two groups:
1) PvP scared them off.
2) There was too much to learn to get to an acceptable level in an acceptable amount of time (Note: I'm not talking about people wanting to solo explore the underdark with an unshifted shifter, I'm talking about people overwhelmed by the size of the friggen map, not knowing where to find a decent weapon, etc.)

Want to know what originally attracted me to this game? Back in college, a friend was playing it and showed me around. He got me hooked via a few minor quests (one that's been removed along with the rest of TarValon, and one that's still in and just as broken as it was back then). We would run around and talk smack about who PKed who. Eventually, I was hooked and running around on my own and my buddy fell away from the game and doesn't play anymore (as far as I know). I went back to school a few years ago (2011) and finished my degree. I showed CF to a bunch of people. Every last one said it wasn't worth the time investment and went back to playing minecraft/CoD, and that was people in a comp sci program.

I certainly don't speak for all the "old folks", but I'm not trying to make the game easier for myself. I see an issue in that we aren't keeping the new players that try CF. I want to fix that, and trying to cut the timesink to step up from total newbie to midbie is one big way to do that. Showing starting points for a few automated quests isn't going to kill the game, but it just might spark someone's interest in finding other quests/aspects of the game that they enjoy. Telling someone where the cheapest potion of recall is isn't going to destroy their impression of the CF world, it just saves them some shopping and time spent casting Identify on non-obvious potions. If you haven't scripted out the Academy by the third time you went through it, then you are a better man than I. Very few people who have been here for any length of time are still manually typing "look sign; look one; look two; look three; look four" and reading the scrolling backstory again.

Us old people don't have those 19-23 year old friends to drag in anymore, so things get shared on websites so that new people have a fighting chance and so that we have a shot in hell of keeping that new player around. If there's something else us old people can do to help, please don't hesitate to let us know.

-Falstaff

There were exp holes. After months of playing though my friend group's highest rank was something like... rank 13. There were auctions in galadon that I was always really into. Jeweled broadsword was something of a wet dream. In general, the elusiveness to rank and stuff was not widely known. Each persons character was kind of a mystery. warriors were willing to help out young adventuring warriors.

My friends and I, once we were able to get in the 'range' of pk, would battle for 'aldeverdi'. Cant recall what it was called before now. Happy boots were something of a magical dream and a huge loss.

It was mostly being able to play with friends which was a competition among ourselves. We got stomped by anyone else in our range but that mattered little as long as we stayed alive long enough to reach aldeverdi to fight for the right of that ####ing castle.

Servants of the dawn existed when you hit those death traps. For whatever reason they were magical and viewed as hero's. Their jobs were like immortals whose sole responsibility was to come save my ass and keep the hope alive. For whatever reason, i don't think that exists as much anymore. That mentality.

I honestly have no idea where I'm going with this so I'm done.

in order:

exploring Tolkien and WoT areas (glamdring, loved that sword!)

playing with friends

immortal interaction, random, frequent, and fun (uller, ishmael, thror, shokai, scarabaeus, vynmylak, i have great memories of all of those)

tug and war of cabal wars, dangerous ranking, and galadon craziness (pks, mobs, imm-quests, auctions, random yelling).

I never really participated in the auctions because I usually only had 200 some gold. We were all rich! One day I found a jewelled broadsword on the ground though. Some fool dropped one of the greatest weapons in the game, right in Galadon!

Fighting for that castle is one of the greatest oldy CF stories I've heard.

.

As such, I don't want you to think I'm ignoring it. I do believe that I've addressed most of these issues elsewhere in this thread. If there's anything in particular you were looking for a response to, please state it again. If you were just giving input, then thanks.

But I'm not looking at all the signs. I just grab the leather and go. Sometimes I look at the race culture painting and reflect upon the room full of representatives that I never managed to assassinate.

Yeah, but that was usually just to kill one Imperial.

If what you are suggesting about the time investment to learn the game is true, then I would love to recommend a consolidation of information. I STRUGGLED with this game for a long time with the simplest of leveling if I was not drug around. And that was nearly a decade ago.

Now, with the numbers dwindling, I think the information contained in Diku Wiki on QHCF is a gold mine. If nothing else, their world map and list of good, evil, and ranger ranking areas are a great resource for starting players, much less their FAQs.

That said, it has been awhile since I have gone through the Wiki here on the Main Page, but with a quick cursory glance, it is still lagging way behind. I mean, just look at the world map. Thanks to who ever put in the time with their art talent, but really? It is not interactive. Its not informative. (But it is Pretty!)

I believe a large part of the issues facing CF right now is there is lots of information out there, but now we are in a three way ####fest with everyone pitted against each other with no cooperation between our resources. I would love to see some outreach between the moderators/creators of these different sources and get it all together in one open and comprehensive source.

NT

Stevers is my anti drug.

is he a druggie?

nt

I heard.