I didn't get a response for my clarification on the policy, but I did have this thought...

The restriction about sharing information in OOC ways is sort of exactly like the War on Drugs (minus the billions in spending) in that it is an attempt to shut off the supply side, without doing anything to address demand. Since lots of information in CF comes with in-game benefits the demand to get said information remains constant, but shutting down (or attempting to? pretending to?) out of game avenues doesn't really change the demand, just makes the supply side go underground.

If the Staff prefers that "restricted" information is shared privately and hoarded then I suppose this is working as designed, but I don't believe these leads to the healthiest version of the game.

I know one of the argument for "restricting" the information is so that those who want to discover it in game can do so, but I think this just works like spoiler tags... No one forces you to go out and read a synopsis of the movie before watching, or download the walkthrough before trying to play it through yourself.

Also the game is down, which is why I'm posting this drivel instead of playing.

Exactly how much of CF do you consider to be "restricted" information?

As far as I can think of, nothing class ability is secret. The vast
majority of gear/areas is fine. These days, I don't even think
there's really much concern with the sleek system. At least to the
point that I don't hear of lists passed about, and I do see people
talk in-game.

For the most part, the point where it feels like various Imms have
asked for things to remain "secret"/"hidden" are where something was
designed specifically with puzzle and exploration in mind. Which,
yes, is also something that tends to struggle in today's world, and
is also why years ago Daevryn mentioned he'd mostly given up on a
Silent Tower type area in favor of Dragon Lairs that're more standard
hack'n'slash.

Ultimately, I think it's more just a failing of the medium and false
hope that builders continue to entertain that it's worth appealing to
that explorer type player. I enjoyed the idea of hiding small secrets
in my area as well, but sort of like Daev's Ysigrath vine...there's
also a point where things designed to reward the observant lose the
concept of "reward" once everyone's aware of it, forcing such things
to be changed or removed.

Personally, I tend to try to respect the idea that AREA EXPLORE
things should remain ingame, questiness...and I honestly can't
think of much else that would be an issue. Of course, about the
most secret things I ever found was spamming open on every direction
in a new area to look for hidden doors. Now you can't even do that
reliably anymore! *fistshake*

Mostly, ask yourself if it seems like what you're wanting to share
was designed as something for a player to figure out. If you're
thinking it's intended as a puzzle, maybe best not to spill all
the details for the world. There's never been restrictions in-
game.

All of the stuff I've been doing lately has been about the same thing. Ultimately these are small changes, but they chip away at enormous difference between the haves and the have nots. Editted to add: It's also stuff I can effect as a player or requires very little code work since other stuff which requires those things is even less likely to gain traction than things I can do myself.

I believe that rewarding an explorer player is a laudable goal, but the real reward is in figuring out the puzzle yourself, or in discovering something surprising, not in finding the vine of practice... Sort of how Twist divided edges into PK related and Obs/Explore related, an explorer probably should find an exploration related reward, not a PK one.

All of that is possible in a world with the Internet in exactly the same way you can choose to walk into a movie without having seen a trailer, or start a book series without having read the Cliff's Notes. The Player can choose to avoid spoilers, but expecting everyone to avoid posting spoilers... everywhere... is, insane. Does it detract from your feeling of accomplishment if you solve a Rubix cube? Is it less satisfying if you follow the pre-written guides (the strategies they use for speed solving)? Does any of that mean the puzzle itself is ruined?

The incentive to talk OOC, to coordinate OOC, to share "forbidden" knowledge OOC is there in the same way the demand for drugs is there. PK junkies want that edge in PK, exploration junkies want to solve that last puzzle, Accomplishment junkies want that 100% completion reward, Newbie just want to figure out how to compete. If you try to control the supply side, you end up with cheat rings and other cartel-esque behaviors around sharing info.

Ask yourself this, as a staff. Would you rather live in a world with spoilers, but those spoilers can be avoided by purposeful choice, or in a world where the haves are purposefully and systematically excluding the have not's so as to keep as much advantage as possible and exclude others from having it? I know what my answer is, which is why I asked what the actual policy is.

If Ancient Instincts locations are laid out in complete wiki map, do you really think some newb isn't going to die just as horribly to Beront's latest STSF Drow Dagger Emporer? Somehow I doubt that bit of knowledge which might otherwise take hundreds or thousands of hours to acquire in the "no spoiler" method is going to really affect the outcome of that fight, but I do believe it will raise the baseline of what is possible as a new player and if that helps keep a newer player from feeling overwhelmed and feeling like they can never close the gap, I think that is a good thing.

Ancient Insticnts affects a small part of the game, and there are many different
reasons that make some sense, for it being questy. A lot of these reasons apply
to most area explores.

What you should have mentioned is the elephant in the room which is
equipment and affects _everybody_.

Every single piece of gear in the game, including limited gear, outside
of area explores, should be in a publicly available database without any
additional cutoff restrictions (like currently implemented).

CF can keep having "secret" knowledge, revealed through exploration or
OOC or thousands of hours of playtime, in the form of area explores and things
like Kteng's or AI or preps not sold in stores, but elements of the game that
constitute fundamental PILLARS such as gear and affect everybody should be
brought _fully_ into the light. That also goes for skills and spells. It is ridiculous
that there isn't an objective description of what skills/spells do and we've had
to treat the vague explanations given as lore handed down over the years.
This has gotten a bit better, but it's the players that did most of the work
in collecting most of that knowledge from forum posts and centralizing it
in various wikis. In a perfect world, it'd be the CF administration that would
export that knowledge, officially, through the main website.

Specifically the difference between low end (unlimited) and high end gear is way to wide. A full database would help a lot but there would still be a huge gap between what you can get and a high end characters set. Neither of these things are things I can do anything about as a player though.

Also unlimited item DB seems to be missing new areas like goblin outpost.

this goes beyond just helping out new players.

Having reliable stats about every piece of non-area-explore EQ item in the game
would promote all sorts of discussions re: creative build-crafting and would
surely increase interest in the game both for new players and vets.

It's the same for edge points. The administration didn't realize (or didn't properly
think about) that the so called positives they got out of the edge changes are far
less important than the negatives these changes introduced. The major
negative being the loss (or penalization in terms of time waste and tedium)
of creative build crafting and customization that in many cases fixed
anomalies in CF's class designs.

>Of course, about the
most secret things I ever found was spamming open on every direction
in a new area to look for hidden doors. Now you can't even do that
reliably anymore! *fistshake*<

Amen man. It's how a found at least 2-3 secret things myself...but never again

This is a general point, not at all meant as a shot at you: I think it's interesting that you mentioned the Ysigrath vine. With all respect to Nep, I've always regarded Ysigrath as one of THE ABSOLUTE WORST areas in the game w/r/t exploration. Certainly the worst lowbie area.

I'm going to use the secret shop as an example. Obviously I can't post how to get there, but hopefully acknowledging the existence of a secret shop in Ysigrath is acceptable; please let me know if I'm wrong.

Now, that puzzle is something that I NEVER in a million years would have figured out on my own. Never. Because I *didn't know there was a puzzle.* I don't know if there are hints, but if there are, they're buried so deeply that I have never once found them. Frankly given this I feel hesitant to even call it a "puzzle"; to me it's something that you either know or don't know, and for years, I didn't know it. I only know it today because I figured it out from reading people's forum posts (many of which frankly said things like "Yeah, I never would have discovered that if somebody hadn't shown me.")

Now, I realize that at any point I could've rolled a neutral or good character and asked in an IC way "how do I get to the shop in Ysigrath?" But frankly that's kinda sidestepping the point -- because I only knew there WAS a shop in Ysigrath from reading people's forum posts. I only knew the violet roots came from Ysigrath because people kept alluding to them on the forums. Heck, without reading logs, I wouldn't even have known that violet roots EXISTED. I never, ever would have discovered them by simply playing the game.

To a lesser extent, the same criticism applies to e.g. preps that are stored in a single drawer in an area where half of the rooms have drawers, most of which are always empty (completely hypothetical example, I'm not referring to any actual preps). It's a *bit* better, because at least in theory I can see myself discovering things like that naturally by reading room descs, but ... in practice I never do. Because I've never had the patience to walk through an entire area and type exa drawer;exa shelf;exa desk; in each room, often repeatedly in case the preps in question are limited and not always in. That's not fun. There's no "aha!" moment when I finally discover the scroll of whatever through that method. There wasn't any "aha!" moment when I finally figured out the shop in Ysigrath either. It was just "ugh, finally."

I think CF has a lot of great areas. I love exploring. Sometimes it's fun to explore areas that you wouldn't have guessed; I've had a lot of fun returning to areas that I'd been in 100s of times, cities and ranking areas and so on, and going through them slowly, really SEEING them for the first time. And heck, sometimes you discover useful things. Even if those useful things had been listed on the wiki or in the item search (and some of them were) that didn't make discovering them a waste of time, because 1. it was fun and 2. I probably WOULDN'T have discovered all of them just by browsing columns of items on the wiki; not all of them would have leapt out at me as "THIS IS USEFUL, REMEMBER THIS." I had to see them in context for their utility to become clear.

I think exploring is fun and useful and regardless of how CF's info-sharing policy does or doesn't change, it will always remain fun and useful. IMO CF is in no danger of becoming a game with no place for explorers. But I think it's unfortunate that what many area writers seem to consider "exploration" often feels like anything but.

>This is a general point, not at all meant as a shot at you: I
>think it's interesting that you mentioned the Ysigrath vine.
>With all respect to Nep, I've always regarded Ysigrath as one
>of THE ABSOLUTE WORST areas in the game w/r/t exploration.
>Certainly the worst lowbie area.
>
>I'm going to use the secret shop as an example. Obviously I
>can't post how to get there, but hopefully acknowledging the
>existence of a secret shop in Ysigrath is acceptable; please
>let me know if I'm wrong.

You should also keep in mind that Ysigrath was written over 20
years ago. However, to be honest I've had similar problems with
pretty much *ALL* of Nepenthe's areas. I remember praying about
Kuo-Toa and containers that I got *told* about, but even knowing
about them, had no idea how on earth I was supposed to have
figured out they were there.

>Now, that puzzle is something that I NEVER in a million years
>would have figured out on my own. Never. Because I *didn't
>know there was a puzzle.* I don't know if there are hints, but
>if there are, they're buried so deeply that I have never once
>found them. Frankly given this I feel hesitant to even call it
>a "puzzle"; to me it's something that you either know or don't
>know, and for years, I didn't know it. I only know it today
>because I figured it out from reading people's forum posts
> many of which frankly said things like "Yeah, I never would
>have discovered that if somebody hadn't shown me.")

>Now, I realize that at any point I could've rolled a neutral
>or good character and asked in an IC way "how do I get to the
>shop in Ysigrath?" But frankly that's kinda sidestepping the
>point -- because I only knew there WAS a shop in Ysigrath from
>reading people's forum posts. I only knew the violet roots
>came from Ysigrath because people kept alluding to them on the
>forums. Heck, without reading logs, I wouldn't even have known
>that violet roots EXISTED. I never, ever would have discovered
>them by simply playing the game.

Some of the argument/debate here that leaves me totally curious is
...why not? People are asking about information sharing, and the
answer is consistently "Great, go interact IC!" w/ a side of "Hey,
please don't just give out walkthroughs outside." For the most
part, a combination of "it generally just doesn't work in today's
world" and a few specific nuisances giving out total spoilers, CF
has leaned away from having a great deal of topics that are off
limits.

>To a lesser extent, the same criticism applies to e.g. preps
>that are stored in a single drawer in an area where half of
>the rooms have drawers, most of which are always empty
> completely hypothetical example, I'm not referring to any
>actual preps). It's a *bit* better, because at least in theory
>I can see myself discovering things like that naturally by
>reading room descs, but ... in practice I never do. Because
>I've never had the patience to walk through an entire area and
>type exa drawer;exa shelf;exa desk; in each room, often
>repeatedly in case the preps in question are limited and not
>always in. That's not fun. There's no "aha!" moment when I
>finally discover the scroll of whatever through that method.
>There wasn't any "aha!" moment when I finally figured out the
>shop in Ysigrath either. It was just "ugh, finally."
>
>I think CF has a lot of great areas. I love exploring.
>Sometimes it's fun to explore areas that you wouldn't have
>guessed; I've had a lot of fun returning to areas that I'd
>been in 100s of times, cities and ranking areas and so on, and
>going through them slowly, really SEEING them for the first
>time. And heck, sometimes you discover useful things. Even if
>those useful things had been listed on the wiki or in the item
>search (and some of them were) that didn't make discovering
>them a waste of time, because 1. it was fun and 2. I probably
>WOULDN'T have discovered all of them just by browsing columns
>of items on the wiki; not all of them would have leapt out at
>me as "THIS IS USEFUL, REMEMBER THIS." I had to see them in
>context for their utility to become clear.
>
>I think exploring is fun and useful and regardless of how CF's
>info-sharing policy does or doesn't change, it will always
>remain fun and useful. IMO CF is in no danger of becoming a
>game with no place for explorers. But I think it's unfortunate
>that what many area writers seem to consider "exploration"
>often feels like anything but.

This is probably more an aspect of individual writers, abilities,
and such. Not everyone who writes areas is exceptionally well cut
out for it.

in tea