Well, I'm probably the only one who thinks this, but I would
like to see the "where" command nerfed.  I think it
is very overpowered.  As an example, and not because it just
happened to me today, but it seemes like a pretty good
example.

I am inside black claw village, selling some low level
equipment so I can get a few coppers to buy food and stuff
having been killed very recently.

Giant warrior steps off eastern, and does "where"
and knows I am in the back south east corner of the fort. 
s;s;s;w;s;s;w;s;s;s;s;s;e;kill

I think I have an extra S in there, but you get the idea.  The
village is down a winding country road, next to a river, goes
through the gates of the fort, and I am standing in a vendor
stall inside not only the village propper, but inside the fort
walls as well.  How the heck is anyone going to see that from
eastern road with enough knowledge to know exactly where to
run to to attack.

from my point of view:
where:
no one but me.

sell sleeves
sell leggings

BAM, unholy giant hell is unleashed on my ass.

Everyone knows from that corner to eastern takes only a few
seconds of real life time to transverse in the game.  This
gives a great advantage to the player that has all the rooms
and paths memorized.  I use this advantage sometimes too. I
understand it goes both ways.

WHAT I THINK WOULD BE MORE CORRECT is if the "where"
command listed who was in the area, like it does now, but
without the detail of what room they are in.  That's what scan
is for. Scan is you visually checking out a room in the area. 
And, with the reduced functionality of "where", then
those people / classes that can scan for extended ranges, have
a real use for the extended scan range they have.

So, warrior steps off eastern road, and using his keen skills
of observation he ("where"'s) and ascertains that
someone has passed through recently.  It's ok that he knows
who that was.  We are famous adventurers after all.

Now, since he knows I am "somewhere" in the area, he
starts hunting me down.  s;s;s;w;s;s;scan a;s;s;scan a;s;scan
a;e;kill

This seems MUCH MORE CORRECT.  It doesnt begrudge someone
their area knowledge, but it also does not give out an exact
location to someone who is far away in game layout, but only
about 3 seconds away in RL interface layout.

Thoughts? Ideas? Imms telling me I am being paranoid, there
are no such things as giants, and even if there were, they
would have better things to do than popping out of thin air
and beating me to a bloody pulp? hehe.

It's already hard enough to find people. Most of the time, you don't know exactly which room another person is in anyway, since lots of areas have multiple rooms with the same or very similar names.

Warrior steps off eastern, "where"
---------------------
People in the area:

Human Mage (PK)
Fire Warrior (PK)
Duergar Thief

(3) people known.

---------------------

The warrior just found the same people as he did with the
"where" command in it's current state. The
difference is, he cant tell that he has to do
"s;s;s;w;s;s;w;s;s;s;s;e;kill mage".

He actually has to go into the area, and find them.

This might actually help you to get more kills when you find
them, because the people you are hunting will not know exactly
which way to go to get away from you.  Which is correct as
well, because from that back corner stall of the fort, if I
use my inate "Area sence" (i.e. where command) and
ascertain that there is a fire giant warrior near by, I would
not know if he is outside the gate of the fort, at the healer,
or upstairs in his guild hall.

>He actually has to go into the area, and find them.

Yes. Except by the time he does, they're going to be gone much more than is the case now.

>This might actually help you to get more kills when you find
>them, because the people you are hunting will not know exactly
>which way to go to get away from you.

This isn't true.

Assuming I'm not at my recall area and I see you coming, word of recall / potion of return is going to get me away from you. The more chance I have to see you coming, the better the chances I have to be gone if I want to be.

Even assuming I can't or won't quaff for some reason, all I need to know is that you're in my area and I want to be in an area that isn't that area. I sprint for one of the area exits. Unless you're sitting there spamming murder/bash/etc. as I run by, I'm gone. If you're doing that, you're probably not scanning to find me. Once I'm out of the area, I continue to run from area to area to area. Since you can't even really tell where I'm exiting the area with where, you need to keep guessing right to have even a prayer of catching me.

Would this proposed change make it harder to kill people? Yup. Is it realistic? Sure. Would it make the game more balanced/fun? I don't think so.

>>He actually has to go into the area, and find them.
>
>Yes. Except by the time he does, they're going to be gone
>much more than is the case now.

I dont think this is a true statement (see below)

<<Snip some stuffs>>

>Would this proposed change make it harder to kill people?
>Yup. Is it realistic? Sure. Would it make the game more
>balanced/fun? I don't think so.

It will be a sad day when ideas are dismissed because they make it harder to kill someone. Statements like that lend credence to the people who claim that CF has turned into a PK, with RP Optional mud.

Me, personally, knowing I can remain in an area for a few minutes without the other player raining unholy hell down on my ass is going to make me hang around longer, and see how the situation progresses. I dont necessarily want to word / recall out of an area if I dont have to, especially if it took me along time to get there.

It opens up dialogue time between the two factions involved.

I would be more inclined to set up a defense / ambush trap, like the cornered cowboys do in the movies when they are surrounded by the indians, finding a defensible corner, setting up my armor spells, and getting ready for a showdown instead of recalling / wording.

All those seem preferable to the "Where" knowing the exact location of your target, jumping back out, and entering all the commands to take you to the target in less than 3 seconds. It's not just black claw village and eastern, it's every city and several other places.

Peek into town, see target at butcher, jump back out of town,
w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;s;kill - 3 seconds

come on. The target is inside the butcher, inside a gate (raised or lowered, where works from the outside of the gate) down a busy road with traffic, and still someone (ok, a 14 foot tall red giant none the less) can run screaming into town, barreling down the road with swords / axes flailing around above his head, straight to the butcher, run inside the door and rain unholy hell down upon your ass and you would not notice this because it took place in about 3 seconds.

I understand the argument both ways. Harder to kill someone, easier for them to get away. I dont see a big shortage of deaths though in the fields. People want to do their time, make hero, and be an integral part of a cabal war, the forces of good / evil, etc. I know. Politics start before hero level, but realistically, when you are typing "where" every 3 seconds, because that is what it takes to get from the outside of the area you are in to where you are at, what role playing are you doing?

I find it impossible to interact with group mates the way I would like to at the lower levels, because when we are ranking, I literally am typing "where" every 5 seconds. Some people would call me paranoid, but those are the people who have never had a giant run screaming through town (etc) in less than 3 seconds to rain unholy hell down upon their collective asses.

Or they are the people who like to do the unholy hell distributing.

I just thought it was a good idea and wanted to get it out there. I'm not real good with fleshing out ideas though, I still think this one has merit.

It will be a sad day when ideas are dismissed because they make it harder to kill someone. Statements like that lend credence to the people who claim that CF has turned into a PK, with RP Optional mud.

Who is making these statements? Anyone who has been around more than a month knows that CF has been and continues to move in the oppossite direction.

I'm not saying your idea is without merit, but seriously, I can't be bothered to read past a statement like this.

Laearrist

Making it that much more difficult to find people (and therefore fight and kill them) makes the game a lot less fun for a lot of people. There's still plenty of time before and especially after fights for RP.

Personally, I like the ability of being able to ambush people in certain situations with non-stealth classes. Just getting the drop on someone doesn't usually mean you're assured of killing them anyway.

What you're suggesting already exits to a certain extent anyway in arenas such as the Open Plains or the Aryth Ocean. You do a 'where' there and you have basically no idea how close or far your opponent is. No idea how much time you have to prep. I for one get freaked out a lot quicker when I do a where and suddenly see a PK who could be on me in as little as a second.

Now if I try to imagine that situation in Galadon, it just doesn't appeal to me. I walk in and see five guys I can kill, but no idea if they're chilling in their guilds, if they're all grouped together at MS, or if one of them is picking their nose at the healer. Am I going to go hunting all over town to try and discern where they are and what they're doing?

I agree it might be nice not to have to spam 'where' so much (I have the impression that most of the experienced playerbase spams it as much as you do), but I'm already in the habit anyway . You can already largely avoid people jumping you like you describe simply by choosing where you hang out.

Realistically, given the scope of say, a continent, finding a single person in midevil times should be damn near impossible.

You could say its realism for it to be hard to find people and have to scan for them and cut kill counts probably in half.

However, the reason why PK exists in CF is to maintain an absolute measure of power.


Here's an example. You're a leader of X cabal. Leader of Y cabal tells you he's going to stomp all over you and turn you into a splat for the weakling you are. You catch up with Leader of Y cabal and kill him. You've now defeated your foe and made him eat his words.

That's why PK exists in CF. So you don't have a bunch of people saying, 'I'm the king, I'm the best, etc, etc, etc' because in a world where you can't PK people, thats exactly what they do. They talk all sorts of crap and because they won't die there's no retaliation or disincentive for them to.

PK in and of itself is a means of governing behavior and granting players power over the community as a whole. If you start messing with people from my cabal and we have no means of retaliating, whats the point of having a cabal to begin with? There should be reprecussions, thats why PK/looting/etc exists. It keeps everyone honest and humble. It sets a real principal to measure achievement and strength. Without it we're all arrogant supermen who will never be put in our place. Thats a much more frustrating notion to me than whether or not someone sneaks up on me.

Thats why changes that drastically make PK'ing harder is bad. Because without the ability to PK there's no structure to the game. Its just a bunch of Billy Badasses RP'ing with each other about how awesome they are and there's no one to keep them in line.

See world of warcraft if you don't believe me.

It opens up dialogue time between the two factions involved.

Many hours of dialogue, probably. A skilled player who didn't want to be brought into combat would never, ever end up that way against a single person who can't use where and see a room name. It's already much harder to chase than to elude a pursuer, especially if you tend to operate solo.

Your change would create a system where players would more or less have to mutually consent to combat, and we're not going to implement that.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I have a better understanding of the thought process behind it now. Part of learning CF is also learning about the game from everyone else's viewpoint, and this has helped me.

A couple other things occured to me after my first post that you might think about with respect to this change or similar changes.

One thing you might think about is whether a proposed change alters the relative power of classes and, if so, if that's a balance that should be changed.

For example, the change you proposed gives a lot more power to classes with stealth abilities (hide, camo/creep, duo dimension, etc.) relative to classes that lack them, since it'd be easier for those classes to scan around and find many opponents without you spotting them on where.

It also gives more power to classes with transportation abilities like summon.

These are good things to think about if pitching an idea. E.g. "I know this change is advantageous to classes with summon, but I believe that's counterbalanced by... "