My guesses:

1) People often ask questions of me on Ask an Immortal or Gameplay, since I primarily impact the game as an administrator and designer, and less so as an IC persona.

2) I'm scary! It's true! Grr.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

These are all IC:

Who has more power in the pantheon, you or Scarabaeus? You are an Implementor, though he is older. Have you eclipsed him in power? I can't imagine Scar is happy with two other IMM liches.

Marmaanth is, by his own admission, still sitting at the kid's table, but how does he come into play?

If the Jullias came back, who would win in a fight between you two? Is there a hierarchy among the Implementors? If so, who has the upper hand?

More to come later.

Thanks.

Nivek

Ultimately, you're discussing the relative power levels of very powerful, ancient beings. From a PC's perspective, all of the beings mentioned are so far above their own ability as to be indistinguishably omnipotent. Followers of any of the deities mentioned likely view their patron as supremely powerful, and I don't think it's ever something that would affect a PC's roleplay.

Official (thus sprach Shoky) dogma on this is that it goes by level, and that level gap would determine how easy a victory would be. However, it is also dogma (thus also sprach Shoky) that any such disruption to the celestial order would gravely weaken the victor, leaving them vulnerable to the machinations of others, thus something rarely attempted.

ICly, we've largely removed visible levels from the staff except for the three divisions which have a functional effect on the way you play the game:

AVA: Cannot empower. Visible.
IMM: Can empower. Visible or not.
IMP: Can empower. Visible or not. OOCly, someone you can contact about an IMM or AVA.

We did this largely to address the issues mentioned in my first paragraph, above.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I like Valg and all, but I'd have to lay money on Scarabaeus, even discounting the death machine Valg was in his mortal days =P

P.S. Captain America would whomp on the rodent's ass.

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." - Jimi Hendrix

In reverse order...

2) I believe you =P

1) If I recall correctly, when you opened this forum you said something to the effect that it wasn't going to be about your religion or scion, more of a place to ask game or imm questions specificly of you. Anywho, I did think up a couple questions for ya.

People are always yapping about declining numbers. If you had the magic wand, how many players would you be comfortable with, either as a pbase or average online. My own thoughts on this is that it is essentialy a trade off of quality vs quantity, you get too many people and it becomes difficult if not impossible to maintain the RP atmosphere we have, just look at any mmorpg (the last one I played left me twitching for a week, and not in a good way).

Since you still have the magic wand availibility of coders, writers and time are no issue, what would you want to do to the game?

Lastly, which level of immdom did you like the best?

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." - Jimi Hendrix

People are always yapping about declining numbers. If you had the magic wand, how many players would you be comfortable with, either as a pbase or average online. My own thoughts on this is that it is essentialy a trade off of quality vs quantity, you get too many people and it becomes difficult if not impossible to maintain the RP atmosphere we have, just look at any mmorpg (the last one I played left me twitching for a week, and not in a good way).

I don't know that I have a number in mind, but the quantity/quality issue is a big one. As an example, I'm a firm believer that removing a chronically disruptive or cheating player ultimately benefits the game (or forums). We give a lot of chances, and give room for misunderstandings and errors, but you won't see me compromising the fairness of the playing field to try to pad our numbers with bad apples. Also, a lot of potential players lack the maturity to handle a complex game like CF, either from a mechanical or RP perspective, and would do better with a simpler game with less stringent standards, like many MMORPGs.

Ultimately, CF is a niche game. All text MUDs are, really. There was a time when MUDs had the advantage of being some of the only practical multiplayer games on a very slow Internet, but now we have to compete against a much wider variety of alternatives. Many of them have a lot of flashy stuff (graphics, sounds, buttons, etc.) that grab the eye a lot better than our skull does. This is why many smaller MUDs flop (including some that tried to emulate us fairly directly)- a product that could debut in 1996 can't compete now- and most larger games are reporting some decline in numbers, us included.

I think we profit more by staying true to our basic premise (murderous roleplay) and trying to locate "our" players, rather than diluting that premise and trying to out-Everquest Everquest.

One thing CF has over any graphical game out there is depth. We can add a new spell in an evening, because we merely need to describe the action and make sure it functions. A graphical game needs to record sounds, do the animations, etc., which is why so many of their NPCs are of the "Red Goblin/Reddish-Green Goblin/Green Goblin" variety, and why new spells are few in number and often variants of one another. We can have 8,000+ NPCs, 11,000+ unique objects, etc. without resorting to Diablo-esque randomization. All of that requires a lot of hand-crafted goodness, but our area and code directories have 11+ years of work in them, and I think it shows during gameplay.

We also win on customization. If you play a MMORPG, you have no reasonable expectation of the staff inventing something just for your character. You're one person in 10,000 or more. Most long-term characters on CF receive some form of custom treatment, and that's something we can offer, largely because we're small and flexible.

I think we have plenty to offer "our" type of player, and the great unsolved mystery of CF remains how to efficiently locate and hook those people. We've been behind on marketing of late, in my opinion.

Since you still have the magic wand availibility of coders, writers and time are no issue, what would you want to do to the game?


In no particular order:
- Finish retouching our existing areas. We've been writing areas that stay shiny for years, but in the very early days of the MUD, some of them were written quickly, borrowed from disparate sources, and suffered from limited oversight/editing. We're not trying to make Thera much larger at present, but we are trying to go through the guts of it and make sure we can be proud of every square foot. We've made huge headway on this in recent years.

- I'd like to see some form of craft system (PC item creation/alteration), but I'm not crazy about how many MUDs implement this- it turns into a spam-a-thon where He Who Hoards Most Hoards Best, and often 'breaks' the economy. I have a lot of ideas on this front, but they're more long-term.

- More diverse experience point methods. I'm a huge fan of Commerce/Quest/Exploration/CabalRaid/Roleplay experience, and I like that they're supplements for traditional adventuring, but not replacements. I don't see us getting to a point where you can hero without lifting a sword any time soon, but I like the fact that you can be rewarded for doing a number of different things. The major challenge is making sure that the risk/reward ratio remains acceptable, and that malicious/collusive uses of the systems are limited as much as possible. More on this front in the future.

- I'd like to see most classes have a lot more abilities in the 1-10 or 1-20 range. I think it's important for hooking new players if they start off with lots of options, and feel like they're "doing something" instead of mashing "kill kobold" over and over. I don't care that much if the abilities are the kind that experienced players would skip either- the idea is to allow some customization and options, as well as flash.

- Class balance at all levels. We've made a lot of progress here, but I'd still like to see more fights in the lowest ranks where I'm not thinking "Character A should really never lose to Character B unless Character B is way less skilled." (I do think skill trumps more or less any character-based issue, though.) At the higher levels, I think every dog has its day, but we could do more to address some remaining rock-paper-scissors matchups (A beats B, B beats C, C beats A).

Lastly, which level of immdom did you like the best?

Don't tell the other IMPs, but right below IMP was nice. I had enough authority/independence to work on the things I wanted to work on, but a lot of nuts-n-bolts tasks were still "above" me, as were IMM-IMM conflicts and disagreements. I recognize the importance of those nuts-n-bolts things, however, and I think I do a decent job with the internal administrative stuff, so it's a hat I willingly wear. IMPdom is sort of like growing up and having to get your own place- a lot more freedom, but Mom isn't going to cook dinner for you.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com