In 2015 I wrote a big post about Bartle, player types and why it was stupid to remove EP rewards for PK, and then EP rewards for exploring. I couldn't find that post now, so I'll repeat it in short.

A long ago CF had 100+ online and good rewards for activity for every playstyle. PKillers were rewarded for PK, explorers were rewarded for exploring, socializers were rewarded for social activity, achievers were rewarded by all those rewards. CF consisted of the almost equal amount of each cohort. And everyone was happy and playing.

Then, for some reason, PK'llers got screwed by removing rewards for their main activity - for PK. Quickly CF lost about 25% of the playerbase, but the staff has ignored it and said that players are idiots and it's not related to the changes in game balance.

Of course, few PKillers has stayed - those, who could also enjoy socializing and exploring. Then, explorers got headshot when some wonderful imm decided to remove EP rewards for explorations. And again players said 'wtf are you doing', but most of those posts got deleted and players banned (me including). When that change was announced, I told that it will draw explorers away, same as happened with PK'llers. I think it's when I've got ban from Umetron.

I've got reply 'you are not player, you have no right to argue - play, then speak'. So, now I have played for a while, and I see that those changes got what has left of playerbase in 2015 almost halved by now.

A day ago I was sitting in the guild and thinking what to do. No one in PK. 21+k commerce exp, so no barter. I would go to explore, but I have no single freaking reason do to so. I would go hunt those who are exploring, but no one explores nowdays because there is no freaking reason to explore. I even TALKED to everyone I had a reason to talk. I even talked to some who I had NOT SINGLE REASON to talk! And then there were no one even to interact, because I've interacted with almost everyone online.

So, immstaff keep shooting CF down again and again. I've took your challeng, Destuvius and Jormyr. I've invested about 400 hours by now to see your changes and have a constructive opinion. I told you that those changes will decrease playerbase, I even told in % how many will you loose and I was quite right in my estimation.

So, when will you begin to listen? You have no expertise in gamedesign and blancing the game. Your actions only makes it worse and worse. It is almost critical moment, after which CF will not recover. Will you begin to cooperate with the playerbase, or is it actually your intention to finish CF and move on? If so, step down and let someone who care to revive it.

I'm writing it not because I want to blame you or want to make you guilty in something, but because I still care for CF and still want it to be saved. Stop being f*g stubborn 'we are the omniscient gods, we know better', and give us a chance to resurrect the game that we love.

It's a text-based game that makes Dark Souls look like a baby game.

You have to log time every week or your character gets permanently deleted or stripped of gear/cabal/whatever.

I'm 34 with kids and a job and I'm probably on the 'young' side. Ain't nobody got time for that kinda thing.

It can't last forever with high numbers .

You could, in theory, play about an hour a week and not lose anything. If you can't play one hour/week then, yeah, CF won't work with that schedule.

It's not so much that it's very hard to not lose your stuff, it's that it's very hard to do *anything* (relative to other games) and then what you *do* accomplish can be taken away because you go on vacation. I'm not going to spend the hours and hours and hours and hours to max out skills just to lose the char because I gotta put the game down for a month. CF is easily the most time intensive farming game I've ever played with any regularity.

Time investment is addiction in itself.

At one point, there was some discussion about character turnover, autodeletion, and the fact that even with autodelete, if you did play a character an hour a week you could still last for like four years. Not saying any of these are by definition better or worse than other options, but on the idea of consideration...

Would you find it more or less appealing to have characters that never autodelete, but age whether you're online or not? You'd gain that you could put down/pick up characters whenever you like, but they'd still be forced to die no matter what.

*As an aside, I've had characters that didn't auto, but as other characters level past/die off/etc, it's hard to get back into the character, so that killed desire more than actually autodeleting.

Whenever I'd go on vacation for a couple of weeks, I'd come back and the motivation would be gone. Vacations suck!

The disconnect is there the either way. If you don't play a character that is totally disconnected from the playerbase (like Jeede lol), you'll lose the steam if you don't play for awhile. No matter the auto or agedeath or whatever.

Auto makes a difference in that you get the negative emotions about losing a character and not deleting him on your own (which might matter emotionally for a player). But the outcome will be the same - the character abandoned.

NT

NT

It seems like these days, despite there being so few players by comparison to the days of having to wait to log in because the mud was full, people rise and fall so fast you can be generation gapped without taking an active role in it. Everyone you knew or leveled with can up and delete or just vanish into the haze and eventually show up as auto deletes so I don't know.

I have been bit by the hording code more times than I'd like, though that could be my fault for playing too many characters at once and forgetting to log on in that nebulous window of time. Sometimes that would crush my interest and I'd delete, other times not so much. It really does depend on the character. In my opinion if you've got a feel for a given character whether it's their role, or that this one is a throwaway mostly for fun or whatever, that'll get you through, but sticking it out is on you. Vacations, I don't know what to say about that, I rarely take them. RL WTF is that?!

Don't presume to speak for all the people not playing...I can only speak for myself and for myself I can absolutely pick up a character after not playing for 2 weeks and love myself just fine as long as I have all my #### still.

I'd find it more appealing, much more appealing. Additionally, you should reserve "limited" status to really a handful of stuff and not almost every single weapon/armor/etc in the game. I still maintain that - if this game were more realistic - you could buy decent armor in any major city.

Take my opinion for a grain of salt as it has been forever since I really played but..

With the lower player base, CF needs to consolidate a few of its features. When you had 100+ players (I remember hitting the hard cap a at least once a week where you had to wait to log in) growing and expanding was smart.

Cabals: going from 6 primary cabals (knights/Shadow, Masters/Battle, Entropy/Arbiters) to a multitude of spec cabals was logical. You needed more to spread out the player base and allowed a whole new experience and RP. However now with such a low player base, perhaps the cabals need to be reduced again. Nothing sucks more then playing a char and actually getting in a cabal and then you spend hours by yourself. It defeats one of the social aspects of the game.

Areas: Again it use to be you had to fight to rank in areas, so it was necessary to create and spread out new areas. However now there are so many it makes it very hard to hunt people. Solution and not saying it wouldnt be a pain in the ass) a modification of the where command. You have "regions" in which you do "where" and it will only show names of people in your region. If you want the room, you must be in the area for it to act as where is now.

Imms and religions, and misc: Addressing empowerment was a great solution which allows people to play the classes and then get the extra juice as their Imm pops on. However perhaps create a few "generic" religions/gods that fit a few roles in which no one Immortal controls but can do so under the generic alias.
The new crop which I have seen seem to be great and I really enjoyed talking to the former Battle Bard :p He has a good head on his shoulders and will do great.

The game is a huge time investment and I really dont know how you can fix that part. A lot of little changes has helped from what I can see so who knows. A major problem CF has is that it now competes with a wide varity of online gaming not only from Computer systems, but all the other platforms.

But..thats just my observation

The game seeming so much more spread out. I remember being able to rank to hero in FoN once you hit like 5 or 7, and it was almost always loaded with groups. Low, Mid, High, and all in between. It was like a bottleneck for the game. It forced interaction and RP situations and was well worth the risk to be able to rank very easily and you only really had to learn about 50-100 rooms to make it all the way to hero, even if all the rest of the game was a mystery. I would suggest finally letting the area re-grow or rehashing an older area to make it similar, ie a true ranking area that covers a very broad range and can be utilized without an enormous amount of effort. One of these days I may apply and try to do this very thing but I don't know if this type of area is something that would be found worth entertaining.

It's kinda along the same lines as the "defense" change came in. It was so that it wouldn't handicap newbies as much and that there would more interaction because learning rates for fighting tougher things like what you'd find in a group were increased. But I think it just added a bit more danger for newbies because now they hit 15 and practice because they ask the vets and that's what they do, (which is what I did when I first began, fighting like 20 kobolds for an hour or two) but since they're typically not as skilled, they're now PK meat.

I only play for a short period once or twice a year, sometimes I skip a year, but I've been with the mud since the beginning, both as a player and also as an Imm.

Some things I really feel could be loosened would be

1) The secrecy. Yes, secrets are great when you can figure them out in game, but when the mud is this old, the wall of secrecy covering every little thing is maddening. When there are other players around to share knowledge with, you can try to learn about Hell or that quest item you found, or even where to find protective wands. But trying to find everything out in-game is so time-consuming there's little reason to even try. We want to be able to discuss strategies and tips for games on forums, and having to spend a few hundred hours to learn only a portion of what you need to know makes the learning curve way too steep compared to every other game out there.

2) Still a little too much immteraction required. I really feel like rewards for many things could be automated better rather than waiting for an imm to check in and give me a title, or certain skills, or quest forms, or a lich, or into a cabal. I've been playing this game since 1994 and I've never managed to get a lich, and I've never gotten into certain cabals or certain religions even when I was trying to RP my ass off. Let some of these things just be automated like every other game out there.

3) No ability to be a casual player. Every time I start playing and get distracted for a few weeks, I have to start all over. I understand the reasoning behind auto delete, but it is a huge disincentive for me to even bother creating characters anymore if I can't take time off and come back.

4) Nothing I do carries over between characters. I feel like we really need to have a single ID we can login with and select characters we want to play, and your account accumulates a certain amount of achievement points to reward us for sticking with the game for awhile. A gear locker that lets you trade things between characters (with limits) would also be very much welcome, as would accelerated learning for reaching certain milestones. Having to start completely over gets to be a drag after you've played newbie # 4000.

5) I also feel the multi-charring and botting rules are archaic and could stand to be loosened, but I will save that for another topic.

People are leaving because there are too few players, its kind of a bad spiral.

Marketing is all good, but it's much easier to reactivate an old player than to attract a new one. Especially for an obscure product like CF and doubly so when the learning curve is really steep and text-based games are foreign these days.

There is always the matter of time as well, and how people choose to prioritize where they spend their time.

This aggravates the problem a bit because as player base declines the "game starts at hero" effect becomes stronger and thus the up-front time investment increases.

And then there is the sacred cow among old-timers that cf cannot be made "less serious" because being a very serious rpg is kind of what defines it.

If it was up to me I'd just make everyone start at hero, and spam every email address in every database about it. Then try to deal with the problems it causes as they arise. That would probably fix player numbers for a while, but there is of course a cost associated to it. But I don't think that will happen.

Please don't turn CF into POSmud. Please.

Sorry, starting everyone at level 51 was a bit rash.

But the point was to have everyone in the game interact with each other in a meaningful way from the get go. So more akin to removing levels alltogether and moving away from a linear progression of power to a non-euclidean scheme (lovecraft yay).

That would imply more remortation (like liches, mummies and new 2nd tier races but not so OP, more edges over time, but 2 noob characters or 1 well played noob could still kill an old character). Basically find a new slower way of power increase than the current level system. But around the paradigm that interactios are not restricted so anyone can PK anyone and RP fully with anyone.

Kept short because drunk

Like on character creation, the game asks you if you want to start at hero or from scratch. Hero characters having half the life duration?

Half life duration is too harsh. Remember, they still will have a lot of things to practice (waste 100-200 hours, depends on the race/class) and will have a huge penalty against heroes who made the whole way up from level 1, and thus have their skills/spells practiced already.

I repeat again: the main reason of why did the majority of the players has left (and began this spiral) were the latest changes that ruined balance between socializers, explorers, pkillers and achievers.

If staff will do what I am suggesting (returning EP for exploraitons and implement rewards for PK similar to unholy weapon), and add automatization to the cabals (80% reuse of Empire bloodoath/promotions/voting mechanics), I believe that the game will get back to 40-50 online within 6 months.

but it wasn't this high before the changes. The 3rd? night of 100 players topped out at like 60 something IIRC. I don't have the hard numbers, but presumably someone in Immland should since Zulg gathers some of it for users and playerbase commands.

I also don't support wholesale reverting the edge changes, but rather something more akin to Isildur or Twist's suggestions.

Online like this will be when two dominating cohorts of the MUD games will be back - PKillers and explorers. There are far more of them than socializers (and achievers are rare, actually). Changes that would give a reason to play and stay in the game will change things to good.

I'm not saying 'return exploration rewards as before', I actually think Twist's idea is good (if it will allow characters to pick useful edges, not just #### like 'upstanding citizen' and other cheap and useless edges).

And I've been talking not about just one change. I'm talking about three fundamental, basic things that are a core of the game and which will affect everything and, in combo, will bring not just old players back, but will allow the playerbase to grow.

Others have identified that their time is increasingly valuable as players as they approach middle age and have things like families and kids to worry about. Fine. That also applies to the staff too.

What isn't an effective use of time is flogging a dead horse. The amount of time spent writing and responding to these posts could be utilized in better ways. Here:

1. Write a post on a forum trying to attract players to the game.
2. Log into the game for 20 minutes and run some newbies through the academy.
3. Work on updating the newbie guides we have, or contributing to a wiki.
4. Apply to become an Imm.

Folks drove away the last full-time coder we had, and are now continuing to misrepresent the major issues facing the MUD.

Edge points is a fridge issue (if it's a factor it's a minor one). The core issue is the value of time, on both sides of the Imm/player divide. A divide which some of you seem intent on maintaining.

People don't seem to understand that opportunity cost applies to staff as well as players with respect to time management. That means that if they are trying to make changes in a toxic environment they will probably go spend their free time in more productive/enjoyable ways.

Count the posts under this one. Multiply it by 5 minutes. That's why CF is dying. People are more intent on posting forums about their grudges than playing or contributing.

Edit: Lot of good suggestions under this post too. Agree with some of them. People need to contribute toward the change they'd like to see though and stop expecting the change to just happen.

Bring back edge points for exploration, just put 100% of the XP in area explore rooms that no one has ever been in. Then you would actually be exploring for those edge points.

People are trying to use the low player count to try and strike an emotional chord to get what they want, it's sad.

Personally I favor something which doesn't act like behavioral incentive scheme.

Ideally I'd like to see edge points given every 5 levels, and over the course of a character aging and leave it at that.

MAYBE for RC or some other stuff, but that opens the door to headaches over Imm favoritism.

That would be my preferred fix- but just my opinion. Also, no full-time coder so a moot point.

Edit: In the past I spoke to some Imms about it and there was the notion that tearing the entire system out and scrapping it would be the least work. I can empathize with that point but this would go down like a #### sandwich with most players. The general feedback I get on edges is "Variety added by edges is great, we don't like the point system."

Yeah, I like how it plays out now, you can't do everything but can pick enough to boost your build, it's not gratuitous and doesn't make you insanely more powerful than fresh heroes.

Just know that there are some of us pulling for you guys!

>Folks drove away the last full-time coder we had, and are now
>continuing to misrepresent the major issues facing the MUD.

This is crap. Plenty of people, including me, supported the edge changes Umiron made. If people can "drive off" a coder, and not every change can be universally loved, than every coder is destined to be "driven off".

You, the staff, have also seemingly done nothing to fill the gap of not having a full time coder, which is incredibly frustrating... Especially since the process is not designed to attract or retain people with that skill set.

Its partially by design that we want people who are willing to do more things the mud needs instead of less. If people really want to help then it shouldnt matter if we ask them to do some other work beyond their "prefered" field.

"If people really want to help then it shouldnt matter if we ask them to do some other work beyond their "prefered" field."

"If we really need people to help then it shouldn't matter if we let them focus on their "prefered" field."

Being a smart-ass aside, an update to the IMM process would help if it has been streamlined or changed.

I don't envy your or the other IMMs position right now, but if you can get someone that can code reliably (and I don't mean me atm), then please get what coding you can out of them with the time they can contribute. If they flake or burn out in 4 months, you still have something.

The players don't have the entire picture when it comes to pointed attacks against certain staff members.

While it certainly wasn't anything as malicious as some of the things which have happened to staffers in the past, after a while getting abused for things that you think are for the best of the players/MUD would wear on anyone.

At some stage most people will simply just decide it's not worth their time and energy, and walk away. Which they do. That's their prerogative as volunteers.

The people posting on these forums ARE doing something about it. They're brainstorming ideas, and trying to present options for the staff to implement.

Highlighting things that need to be fixed and presenting alternatives to them IS contributing.

Or at least, it is contributing if we have a staff that is concerned and willing to listen. That remains to be seen.


The player/staff divide is there and probably not healthy, but you're lying to yourself if you think that is purely a player-driven issue. The staff limits itself to the ways it can communicate with the players (you're still banned from posting on QHCF right, or at least doing so as an Imm?). Then look at the posts on your own official forums asking for an Imm response. They almost always go unanswered. Frankly, it's damn near impossible to have a constructive dialogue with a member of the staff. It's tough to even get a generic 1-liner response most of the time. And that is a staff issue, not a player issue.

Sure, there are some asshole players that take things too far. But if you're not willing to even try to communicate with the players, what are you even doing here?

You might be brainstorming ideas Java but the rest of the people on your side seem to be whining more than anything. "Give me what I want, you want the MUD to die if you think otherwise!"

These types of discussions have never been played out on the forum, the imms do them behind the scenes and reach consensus there. I don't remember change ever happening quickly on CF, the imms will convene an entmoot and discuss things at length though I'm sure.

Seriously, remember the days where something would get changed and no one would answer or we'd get a vague ass "By Design" post by Nepenthe?

I mean, ####, you had Scarab admit to a code change recently that WASNT announced when it happened. The fact he even checked/admitted to it is a HUGE PLUS for player/IMM relations.

Or look at all the posts by Destuvius recently where he gives concrete facts about the immortal process.

Look, if Immortals don't feel like responding in a ####-posting thread, you CAN get upset that you think they are ignoring stuff...but in reality they have looked at the post and judged the opportunity cost of posting is too high.

There are issues in communication. I highlighted that and tried to make a drive to improve things when I first came in. For various reasons that did not work.

In the end I gave up. The futility of throwing hour after hour at trying to improve player/staff relations when people are, for the most part, set in their ways and are largely unwilling to compromise or work together as a community was a disappointment.

It doesn't bother me that people are the way they are (our community is better than a lot of other communities out there, in fairness), but I'm not interested in burning through all of my free time chasing a dream. If I wanted to do that I'd go treasure hunt in Peru or on the ocean floor or something and go look for pirate gold.

It's fine to want a game you care about (as a player) to flourish. I understand the upset around watching the numbers slide. I suspect the issues run deeper than just code changes. It doesn't mean the staff or players get a free pass- but there is a possibility that this is outside the staff's hands no matter what we do.

"but there is a possibility that this is outside the staff's hands no matter what we do."

But, please, do not let CF die without finding out for sure.

And look, I don't think in any of my posts did I ever say anything along the lines of "#### you players the IMMs are perfect and doing everything 100% correct".

What I have tried to do is offer realistic commentary (with some snark, of course) about the reality we face. And about perspective.

Do I wish that more IMMs were like Zulg/You/Twist and were very transparent and upfront with the players and drove dialog forward? Of course.

I also wish there were more IMMs period. And more interactions. And more minor quests (like that one that ####ing douchebag paladin player bitched about on Dio's...good lord).

What I don't want to do is harp on these things so much so that anyone wanting to help feels that it is too daunting. Which is kinda how I feel any player trying to IMM now might see it.

You treat posts like this as a toxis. It's not. It's time to receive criticism as a mature people and not get offended by it. I've spent about 400 hours with my character and helped many people, too. I wrote a decent (I think) guide for one class that I have mastered, and I'm sure it's helpful. Some players actually do what you suggest here, but low online is not inspiring anyone. Not only mature life caused online to decrease dramatically, but changes that were done, changes that killed any activity except for level up, join cabal and then just sit and talk.

I think I could work on help for newbies; actually, passing Academy IS difficult, and academy quest is almost impossible to complete without reading how to do it on the forum/notes. I think more hints should be given to the newbies there (exactly if some NPC would tell them 'go north', 'open down' and etc). But it will require a bit of coding.

So until there are more activities for heroes, it won't really help. Return reasons to be in the game for heroes and you'll instantly see online growing back.

You have challenged me to try and play. I did it, and I'm telling why I have no interest stay in the game. I'm not saying it's a FACT, I'm sharing my experience and my feelings. And a lot of players did the same, but all we are getting is 'you are being toxic!' reply, which won't get CF anywhere.

EDIT to add: staff said that EP's for explorations will be replaced with immexp. It's not happening. I've got some fomr one wonderful immortal, but nothing else, and don't think it will ever happen.

I don't want IMM xp, I didn't want rewards...

I simply wanted to interact with a really solid Immortal.

And that's what you've become. Don't lose faith man, keep doing your thing and try to tune out the vicious negativity.

You need to stop deleting after 30 hours though. Was sad that you deleted.

First, I think Raltevio is awesome.

I don't see grudges, I see people trying to contribute ideas they think will help. People are giving feedback on what they like and (mostly) dislike in an effort to maintain the playerbase.

I posted about a week ago asking if the IMMs saw a problem and if they had a plan and how the PB could help. No IMMs responded.

I've been playing 10-40 hours a week for a long time. Lately, I've been playing much less. The reasons why are CF issues. Those combined with issues of others that make them play less/stop playing are what need to change to maintain the PB.

CF cannot survive on new players as the old one's leave. Listening to the PB is step no. 1. Then the hard part is sorting out what can and should be done to make a fun experience for the majority.

My current character has six edges and i'm sure it's more than enough for a single character.

Yes, CF is in very bad shape especially during off-time, sometimes there are 0-1 player online.

BUT IT'S NOT BECAUSE OF EDGE POINTS!

We need a better system how to help a newbies and i'm willing to spend a lot of my free time to participate. Though right now i'm not sure how exactly.

Problem is not with EP's. Problem is with the lack of goals if there are no one to kill. Before umedron fckd up EP system, I'd go somewhere and do some explore. Yes, grinding. But you also have to grind XP, wands, preps, commerce, etc. Fo some reason they have killed grinding of the exploration points. So now, when I have no need to grind XP, wands, commerce and there are no one to interract/fight, I have NOTHING to do. NO-THIN-G.

There were players who played for sake of exploration XP grinding. They even had the properly titles. Some were doing it for the sake of the rating ("whoa, I've grinded most OBS/EXP XP than anyone else in the game!"), and it's also ####ed up.

and about your 6 edges. Congratulations. But for some classes 6 is enough, for some (healers) 0 is okay, for some even 12 is not enough to finish the build. So you have your 6 edges and you still play. But other player's don't.

Helping new players is great, but when a new player comes to an empty MUD, chance for his conversion into a player is about zero, no matter how actively you are helping them.

Yes, we already grind XP, wands, preps, etc.

I cannot believe someone grinds even commerce exp, overall 21000 commerce exp = 1 average edge or something like it?

And _everybody_ would need to grind if old EP system returns because some characters will have twice more edges than some others and for many it's just unacceptable.

What to do when there is nothing to do? It's totally different question. Everybody will spend 20-30 hours on grinding OBS/EXP experience and then will still have nothing to do. But buy-in for hero pk will cost us 20-30 hours more and i don't think it will bring more people than force to leave because of it.

Not to mention that a newbies don't know where and how to grind. Do you really want to give more expeirenced players even more advantage over newbies?

Bringing back old EP system would also diminish the importance of being leadered and tattooed. Right now each of these gives 1 good edge, but if players can get 1 good edge just for visiting seaport of Hamsah for 100000000th time then it would make less people try to rp better to become a leader and/or tattooed.


P.S. Yes, some people need 12 edges, four legacies and barrier spell to compete with some others who don't need any of these. But isn't the better advice for them would be to play better instead of giving them huge advantage for just grinding?

The game is about grinding. Any game. You grind mobs, exploration, items, pk, skills. It's return for effort.

Removing goals and means for grinding you remove the game itself.

I'm totally with wln on the matter.

The reality is very simple: Recent changes gave rise to a spiral that dropped
player counts to the levels that will kill the game if not mitigated.

It's not about game balance and it's not about newbs and it's not about
some idealistic vision for the game. We had a great game 10 years ago
and a good game 3 years ago.

We have a game that is dying today. What changed in-between? How many
people have publically stated they stopped playing due to these changes?

It's one thing to stick your head in the sand or the fingers in your ears and go
*lalalalala* and quite another to face the grim reality. It won't matter making
the game easier to play for new players, because the new, virgin mud players
*will not come* fast if at all.

What matters is to *immediately* go back to the player count levels that
can get CF out of its death spiral and sustain it in the near future.
It's quite obvious what needs to change for that to *maybe* happen now,
as some people have stopped playing for so long, there are doubts
they'd be able to return.

Let me reiterate something I've mentioned many times before:
You don't radically change something that has been deeply entrenched
for so long without offering something to replace it. Messing with a successful
feedback loop in this fashion is colossally stupid.

Umiron did exactly that, and then to make matters worse, walked off into the sunset.

That is all.

As I said before, grinding exploration points would do TWO major things for the game:

1. People would have something to do in their free time. Now they are just quitting because of boredom. No one has ever gathered all explorations/obs points that are in the game. It would make players busy at least for 200+ hours, which is A LOT.

2. The more people would stay in the game to explore, the more people would hunt them. It would give not only goals to explorers, but also it would give goals to PKillers.

This is so obvious, I can't believe that someone cannot see it.

NT

#### the Gank-o-meter. A solo kill at this point is just a matter of time.

By defending changes which are obviously nuked CF, and which I've exactly predicted how will affect the game in a year. But who care for numbers, CF is soooooooooo balanced now. Soon it will become perfectly balanced (and finally dead).

Maybe you guys can drown it with all your whining and crying.

What do you care?

You don't know a thing about me, let alone enough to tell me whether I play or not, so #### off twatter.

And you stated you don't play and were... here for the nostalgia? So either you are a liar, or you don't play... Or both? I dunno man, but you aren't exactly contributing other than telling everyone to move along Officer Barbrady.

Edited to add: http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=67528&mesg_id=67532&page=

I'm under no obligation to tell you the truth about anything.

...who creates really good, interesting and effective characters, on the forums you act as you are willing to finish CF. Or as you really do not understand what is happening and can't connect obvious results to the obvious events in CF timeline. Which is sad, but it also reflects immland vision. You and they mutually keep feeding each other with illusions of goodness, that everything is okay, and helping them to shrug off the consequences of the fatal chnages they did during the last years.

>...who creates really good, interesting and effective
>characters, on the forums you act as you are willing to finish
>CF. Or as you really do not understand what is happening and
>can't connect obvious results to the obvious events in CF
>timeline. Which is sad, but it also reflects immland vision.
>You and they mutually keep feeding each other with illusions
>of goodness, that everything is okay, and helping them to
>shrug off the consequences of the fatal chnages they did
>during the last years.


So because I have a different opinion than you it means I want to see CF die? You're an idiot. Get over yourself, your ego can't possibly be that big.

I think it's more that CF's playerbase is severely dwindling, yet you refuse to even have a conversation about it. In fact, you seem actively opposed to even considering ways to make the game better.

Every post you've made on each of these threads is an attempt to either shut down or sidetrack the conversation. That isn't the behavior of someone who gives a #### about the game's future.


If you like the current edge system, fine. That's your opinion. But what do you think should be done to make CF better now? Or are you refusing to even acknowledge a problem at all?

Here's my point of view Java, I thought CF was better before edges even existed. I didn't like how imm chars seemed to have all the best edges, know what they did or how to synergize them with their builds before mortals did and how their friends suddenly seemed to get those benefits as well.

I felt it was a way for them to make CF a less skill based game and more of a suck your nearest Imm's #### game for edge points so you can compete. I don't think dialing back the rampant mindless edge collection is bad for the game at all, it's one of the reasons I started playing again.

So where are we going to go from here? We disagree on the matter, it doesn't mean I want to see CF die or that I think people who have differing opinions want to see CF die.. It simply means we disagree fundamentally about this issue.

Sure there are issues but you won't see any posts from me complaining about them. I think the playerbase is a bigger problem than the immstaff and the work they do at this point. So much salt, so many tears.

>Here's my point of view Java, I thought CF was better before edges even existed. I didn't like how imm chars seemed to have all the best edges, know what they did or how to synergize them with their builds before mortals did and how their friends suddenly seemed to get those benefits as well.

I felt it was a way for them to make CF a less skill based game and more of a suck your nearest Imm's #### game for edge points so you can compete. I don't think dialing back the rampant mindless edge collection is bad for the game at all, it's one of the reasons I started playing again.<

I also started playing before edges. CF was hard enough before that period for a newbie. Now, it's nigh impossible unless you just say "#### it" and find a vet to perma/talk to you OOC.


>Sure there are issues but you won't see any posts from me complaining about them. I think the playerbase is a bigger problem than the immstaff and the work they do at this point. So much salt, so many tears.<


I will say again, everytime I think about rolling a character, I think about how so of my favorite players have left, and how some of my LEAST FAVORITE are currently playing a ton. And I think to myself "Self, do you really want to deal with that #### and basically make those assholes feel better?".

And the answer is no.

Currently at least.

Regarding the remaining playerbase being my least favourite. Bunch of whiny cunts. Makes me question whether I can be bothered making a character too.

Right now, the ONLY way to get edges is through Imm support. So you're saying you hated the old system, but the new system is even worse. It seems like you would be in favor of changing it.



I'm not sure how you point the finger at the (shrinking) playerbase, rather than upstairs. What I see from most of the playerbase is continued brainstorming and ideas on how to make the game better. Sure, some of those ideas are trash. Maybe some of mine are. But at least they're trying. There are a few whiners, complainers and cheaters. But fewer now than in CF's heyday, and we managed back then just fine.

Frankly, I'm not sure how much hard work the Immstaff are even doing at this point. My best guess (hope) is that they're all saturated with tasks behind the scenes, but that's why I was lobbying for fixing the Heroimm process earlier today. There is no visible support coming from above, just an apparent attitude of either apathy or indecisiveness. It's frustrating from a player perspective.

Posts like this are designed to at least start talks on how to improve the game. But when people like you seem only interested in shutting down communication, and we get silence from the Immstaff, what do you expect?


I haven't seen anything from you saying what should be done differently to the game. If you don't want the game to die, what do you think should change to keep that from happening?

There's a reasonable upper limit to what you can get even with imm support these days. The playerbase was shrinking before edge points went away and even before edges existed for that matter, a huge part of what you're seeing is likely just confirmation bias. Unless anyone has hard stats as to the playerbase numbers before and after the change, you will be hard pressed to convince me otherwise.

I don't have all the answers Java, nor do I pretend to, I'm thankful it's not my job, I'm just here to play the game. I'm not really shutting down communication, I'm shutting down hyperbole and blanket statements that people want to throw out there as fact.

There is a reasonable upper limit you can get with Imm support, that's true. But my concern is the limit that you can get WITHOUT Imm support is approaching zero. That's terrible and it needs to be fixed.



Ultimately, no one can say exactly what is causing the playerbase to shrink, or what's causing it to shrink faster than it used to.

Here's what I can say with absolute certainty:

For me, the game was more fun when edge points were more readily available, because it allowed customization of your character to an extent that is not currently possible.

The game was also more fun when there were more heavily involved and interactive Imms.

Those are the two biggest changes that have affected the amount of fun I had 5 years ago compared to now. They are the two biggest reasons that I don't feel excited about rolling a new character anymore. I think if those two things were fixed, more players would play.

If you think something different, please share it. Right now, I'm tired of logging in with just 4 other players (which is not uncommon during my play times).

Yeah, well, like I said, I really think if explore/obsv XP were relegated strictly for quality of life edges like Twist suggested, it would be fine. It's a happy medium that doesn't bring back exploring for the sake of powergaming.

I like immteraction as much as the next guy so I agree on that too, it'd be nice if people could be on CF exactly when you are to do stuff but we have to realize that's just not a practical reality.

Also think of who the Imms have to choose from out of the playerbase to promote, bitter and jaded morts they've been punishing for years. It's hard to take a chance on someone like that, honestly Java, you'd be a prime candidate to Imm. It's really easy to want someone else to do this stuff, but to want to do it yourself? Totally different story.

You're passionate enough about it, be a part of the solution, join the team, make a difference.

NT

To ignore any arguments and throw insults at people who are politely explaining their point of view? You may think or speak whatever you wish, but I have numbers to back my arguments, and you have nothing but insults.

After this your post, I really think you are intentionally trying to finish CF off, as some other players. End of talk with you, sir, and respect that I had for you as for a person is now totally gone, after you showing your real nature. End of talk with you.

No idea who you are, I'm sure I'll survive without your respect.

I'd argue that Isildur, Jhrybian and I have done more to affect the game for good as opposed to you.

Example: Qinsa made people want to NOT play CF.

Isildur's characters make me want to play CF.

Jhyrbian's characters make me want to play CF.

Brondalorm, for all the dumb #### I did and terrible choices I made, seemed to boost player numbers for a while due to all the logs I was posting.

Cavaet: I am aware that you care about CF, and that's to be commended. I just think you're focused on the wrong issues, and I'm sorry if my dismissive tone upsets you.

The Brondalorm logs made me roll up Sephira.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=47373&mesg_id=47373&listing_type=search

NOTE THE TIME.

As a person who:

1. Defended removal of EPs.
2. Whined about not having enough EPs afterwards.
3. Is not playing now.

You really should not make fun of people who stay committed to their opinion.

1) It was ####ing retarded that characters could have 20+ edges, essentially making them "god-like" and so far removed from a newbie who had 0-1 edges that CF (which was always tough for newbies) essentially created a learning curve where you had to cheat to "get ahead". That's a ####ing ####ty system.

2) Did I whine, really? Or did I say, "Huh, the change is pretty apparent, I should have prepared my edge choices better". You're ####ing wrong if you think I whined. I personally have agreed with nearly everything Destuvius has told us about how EPs are accrued and how many you can feasibly choose.

Do I believe some edges should be part of the class? Yes, said it in my "What I would change about CF" post. Do I think some should be legacies? Yes, again.

3) I will say again, the MAIN REASON I am not playing now is I am working 2 full-time jobs and 60-70 hrs a week. When I have 1-2 hrs of free time, I'm too burnt out to play a CF char the way I want to...and as no Role Ideas are coming to me...I have no desire to play.

Does that mean I think CF is worthless? No.

Also, it didn't help that a player (who you and several other players have encouraged and applauded) went into my personal information and talked about a friend of mine who died like it was a ####ing joke, so yeah, go #### yourself Boris.

Absolutely no one likes Sultan.

Some of us got a kick out of the revelations of OOC cheating between certain people. That is it.

He's a douchebag, everyone there acknowledges it, and no one actually enjoys him or his personality.

The only reason he's still posting there is because .info has hung it's hat on being the place where a person won't be banned, even if they are an absolute pathetic excuse for a human being.

...but too many players I like and respect are "humoring" him and making him think his behavior is acceptable.

And I have certain lines that I don't find acceptable to cross. I mean, you can threaten me with OOC death (like he did when .info went live) and I could care less.

But speak ill about my dead friend? Nah, homey don't play that ####.

>A day ago I was sitting in the guild and thinking what to do.
>No one in PK. 21+k commerce exp, so no barter. I would go to
>explore...

You mean, "I would go walk through an area I've already been through before, looking at mobs and room items just to farm xp"?

>...but I have no single freaking reason do to so.

If what you were doing is what I described above then I would agree. If you were legitimately exploring then I can't agree. Your reasons could include: enjoyment of exploring an area you've never been in before, finding new useful gear, finding new useful preps, finding new useful places to rank, etc.

"Real" exploration still has benefits. Fake exploration no longer does. Which I think is a good thing.

NT

You are a person who ANNOUNCED quitting CF because of what it become.

WTF are you doing now?

Don't remember doing that. You sure you don't have me confused with someone else?

NT

You are a good player, I guess, but if you have no interest in exploring areas over and over again, that doesn't mean that no one else would find it funny/interesting/challenging. I haven't been in some areas for 3-4-5 years now. Going there would probably be challenging even for me. But I won't go there because I don't have enough reasons to do so.

And definitely, I would have something to do except for sitting in the guild and waiting for someone to login, type 'who pk' and quit after 5 minutes of 'playing'.

>"Real" exploration still has benefits. Fake exploration no longer does. Which I think is a good thing.

Which halved remains of the playerbase after "umiron's wonderful chabges". Yeah, very good thing.

>You are a good player, I guess, but if you have no interest
>in exploring areas over and over again, that doesn't mean that
>no one else would find it funny/interesting/challenging.

If you find it funny/interesting/challenging, why do you need to be rewarded with edge points in order to go out and do it?

>Which halved remains of the playerbase after "umiron's
>wonderful chabges". Yeah, very good thing.

Except I don't grant that this particular change is the cause of the lower numbers.

Why is that a good thing?

If I had to guess, I'd say I've killed damn near a million trolls in the past. Yet I keep doing it. Over and over again. Since it's no longer a new experience and I'm not doing it for the pure joy of killing trolls, should we just get rid of the concept of ranking?


CF (and MMO's in general), involve grinding for various things. Grinding isn't necessarily a problem, we do it on almost every log-in.

Why is going through an area to farm exploration experience a problem, when going through an area to farm mob-killing experience isn't?

They both provide benefit to the character in various ways. They both make the character more powerful. They both can be boring and repetitive.

Why did computerized versions of DnD introduce the concept of grinding? Can you recall playing an in person version where you knew going in... This 4 hour sessions we're just going to kill goblins and try and gain a level..

I'm not disagreeing with you that one form of grinding is fairly equivalent to another (although group XPing should be less grindy as it is a group activity and explore grind is not), but explain to me again why grinding is necessary and desirable?

It's necessary, because you can't have every character automatically start at lvl 51 with a full set of armor, perfect stats and perfect skills.

There needs to be an element of "earning" power. The way that happens is primarily through grinding. If you have a better alternative that can work on a large scale, I'd love to hear it. So would every MMO developer out there, I expect.


And for the record, I'm not saying grinding is desirable. I'm saying its necessary and not un-desirable.

>It's necessary, because you can't have every character
>automatically start at lvl 51 with a full set of armor,
>perfect stats and perfect skills.

This is false. You can have this. I think you mean to say "shouldn't have every character" which is a different statement, but also untrue.

Lots of online multiplayer games start you with a character that is exactly as powerful as it will ever be.

>There needs to be an element of "earning" power. The way that
>happens is primarily through grinding. If you have a better
>alternative that can work on a large scale, I'd love to hear
>it. So would every MMO developer out there, I expect.

Why does there need to be an elemental of earning power? Why does that have to happen through grinding? Why wouldn't leveling which is so trivially easy as to only be done when you wanted to not work? I'm not saying grinding isn't a tried and true method, but I'm asking you to question the basic assumption that it is essentially the "only" way.

There is also the point that most places with a lot of grind also allow you to play a character forever. You never have it auto deleted or age die out from under you... That grind work sticks with the character forever.

>And for the record, I'm not saying grinding is desirable. I'm
>saying its necessary and not un-desirable.

I agree it is not entirely un-desirable, but not that it is necessary. It might make sense for the kind of game CF is, or wants to be, but that doesn't mean it is the only way.

But now you're talking about a text-based version of Counterstrike (actually, that has some amount of earning as well).

I don't think that's what anyone is really interested in. But if that's what the majority wants, so be it.


My argument isn't that grinding is necessary, per se. My argument is that grinding isn't a bad thing. It's a part of the game in many other ways already, grinding for obs/explore exp wasn't some new and terrible affliction on the game that needed to be stopped.

But those who want it are playing now, and everyone else has left. And it's the best proof of what majority (did) want.

EDIT: answered under the wrong post. I meant, that majority has left because CF has became what it is now. Boring and annoying, without worthy rewards for their timesink.

Ranking serves a couple purposes that, IMO, xp farming for edge points does not.

1. It creates an incentive for characters to interact with one another.

2. It forces players to put themselves in situations where they're more vulnerable to PK.

3. It attaches a "cost" to advancing in rank. The alternative, i.e. no cost, would be a bad thing, IMO.

4. It makes it harder for a character to spend his entire lifetime at a rank where his class enjoys the greatest advantage.

5. It attaches additional disincentive to mob-dying when you're below level 51. Or, to look at it another way, it attaches additional incentive to reaching 51.

I actually agree that we should incentivize exploration and observation. However, I think we should do so in a way that avoids the incentive to farm. I've outlined that elsewhere, but the brief summary:

1. Stop giving EP for exploration XP above 10k. (Or maybe 15k.)
2. Stop giving EP for observation XP above 15k. (Or maybe 20k.)
3. Throttle the amount of EP a character can derive from observation and exploration XP based on rank and hours-played.
4. Characters don't "lose" EP from observation/exploration XP if they accumulate it "early"; they'll eventually derive full benefit once they hit the necessary rank/hours milestones.

I'd employ the same general principle for imm xp, role xp and PKs.

I'm ok with your limitations, honestly. My problem right now is that the only way to get EP is through either Imm experience (which seems to be very rare for most characters), or role entries (which are the new way, more boring way of farming EPs).

Right now we have a lot of awesome edges that are out there, but no one gets to use them because most characters are limited to 2-3 of the most powerful can't-live-without edges. They don't have the opportunity to test new ones, because the cost of losing out on the rest is too great.

I'm a firm believer that more edges is better and more fun for the game. If any edges are OP (and some probably are), they should be toned down or removed. But let players customize their characters. The game is more fun that way. The method exists, it's just throttled to an unnecessary extent now.

If you want true customization instead of a scenario where every player chooses pretty much the same edges because they're obviously the most powerful, then there would need to be some serious rejiggering of edge costs.

I agree that imm exp is hard to come by. I'm led to believe that the amount of EP you can get from role exp caps out pretty quick. Could be wrong. Beyond the initial entry and maybe one or two more, I don't get the feeling that attempting to farm EP via role entries is very effective.

If the goal for edges is to ensure that every character of type X I meet is going to be a little bit different, then we'd want to have as a goal that every edge PK-relevant edge is taking approximately as often as every other PK-relevant edge. Achieving that would require making some edges more expensive and other edges less expensive, and would require constant adjustment in reaction to the player base's shifting preferences.

If every assassin starts taking edge X then edge X needs to become more expensive and/or everything else needs to get less expensive.

Having experirence of being PKed by MorsGotha in Trothon where I was taken by Zruulg solely for the purpose of grinding edge points, I was both forced to interact and PK.

So no, your idea is wrong.

What about the 20 different characters that just plain ignored me because they were out farming obsv + exploration XP as lowbies whenever I wanted to level?

Let's only present half the case, great way to get your point across....

Isildur has made a statement, I have proven him wrong. I did not make a statement, so proving me wrong is meaningless.

And by the way, those exploring players were online, and so were you. Now they're not, and so are you.

According to Tac that means they were "destined" to leave and we should move on.