Think about making a pool in-game, like NOTE, called CHANGE pool,
and make public all changes you think are worthy of mrntioning there. Easier to keep trach for mort and IMMs alike. I know MUD where it worked.

>You would make the tweak, and it would read on the motd, or
>announcement board: AUTOASSIST NOW LAGS FOR TWO ROUNDS

Just one, actually.

It was an attempt at fixing something by me, and I'm thinking I might just take it back out and try another solution. A lot of things that seem like a decent idea in testing fall down in the actual game.

Thought it was two rounds, cause you see two sets of melee pass by before first command, but realised it's actually on the first round you are hit by the lag. I think the change is fabulous, can make the difference between life and death against a gang, and enhances surrounding the sunrise a bit, also makes using combat only options a bit harder to use in gangs. If the bug with autoassisting out of range can be fixed, it's a change towards the good. My deal was more with the lack of information, rather than the change itself, but if it was only in for testing, I can see why it wasn't reported.

Yeah, well - in your surrounding the Sunrise example, you might permalag yourself autoassisting. Now, if they made the autoassist generally just lag like...half or 2/3rds a round, that'd make sure you can do stuff at least. But then, I'm not a coder so hey, just ideas.

Sorry! And my other question to you still stands. Yes, that one. I'm waiting...!

n/t

People complain less about tweaks when they don't go into specifics.

is he is complaining that you can no longer pull entwined people. Which is good because of the abuse possible by perma gankers. If I recall at one point once you entwined you didn't even need to rewield another whip/flail to pull the guy you had entwined that got me ganked down by imperials at least 5 times while defending in the village though this was like a year ago.

I don't really know why people took it as such. When something is changed I adapt. Besides, I don't have a charachter right now, so I have no reason to complain. The first time I noticed I can't pull entwined people, I thought it had always been like that. Looking back, I seem to remember actually pulling myself out of a gang, while entwined. Whether or not tweaks are beneficial or harmfull to a combo I play or consider playing is irrelevant. The fact that you need to GUESS what I'm whining about, might be interpreted as such, that I'm not in fact whining, but making a sincere suggestion, that I believe would enhance the CF experience for at least some players.

I disagree with somethings changed (someone is bound to disagree) and give big thumbs up to some. Yet, it would be nice to know when things get changed. Perhaps my examples were poor ones, and gave the wrong picture, but they were the first few ones that came to my mind.

Now, I shall give you a touching fictive example of what I mean:
If say, the Imm staff decided that elf dagger specs were overpowered, and needed to be toned down. To downtone elf dagger specs, they decided to give them a - to hurl, so it would land less often. Now, in the fictive world where elf dagger specs were very strong, this would be a good change. But since these new tweaks are not publicised to the playerbase, someone will roll an elf dagger spec, and build his charachter concept (perhaps legacy/2nd spec choices) around hurling people. So, this someone rolls his elf, spends long hours ranking up to hero, playes his well developed role, spends lots of effort, and at hero he starts to wonder, why are my brilliant tactics not working. He spends more time trying to make it work. And at the end, after playing his charachter for 160 hours, he finds out it just won't work because it has been changed.

So, back to point. With cf constantly evolving, and the rules of the PK game constantly changing, there is a lot to keep up with. It would be nice to have at least some idea if the thing that won me a fight yesterday will kill me today. Or if the thing that completely tooled me yesterday, has been downtoned and I have a better chance at a spin today.

elmeri, hoping his hidden whines and complaines are not seen as clearly this time

A number of tweaks never get announced to the public or just get told to the few people they affect because of the WAAAAAAA affect. I seem to recall valg even writing a dissertation of sorts about pontification (thanks for expanding my vocab valg). Look back at the slew of stuff that went on with the recent change to weapon avoidance and I am willing to bet they only changed 1 character in the entire code for that one.

Long and short since I always ramble. Not all tweaks are announced because they are not significant enough for the players to need to know about them and the imm staff may not want to have to deal with the deluge of complaints or questions that accompany them.

- If I'm changing something that was never publicized in the first place (how a quest functions, etc.), I don't feel obligated to announce that it has changed or how.

- If it's a 'fix' to an exploit or an undiscovered bug, I probably won't announce it. Honest players won't notice the difference anyway.

- If it's a deliberate change to design (up-powering or down-powering an ability, etc.), I'm more prone to announce it. I admit I'm more likely to announce up-powering than down-powering, but that's because I generally have to deal with less crying, and not because I have some overriding goal in mind.

The aside begins:
For whatever reason, people frequently complain when an ability gets down-powered, but rarely complain when an ability gets up-powered. Logically, this is backwards in terms of a PvP (*) model-- if we make Jab weaker, only sword-spec warrior is hurt, whereas everyone else in the game becomes relatively stronger. The vast majority of players benefit in a PvP sense when an ability gets toned down, so even the purely selfish motive is opposite to what we observe.

It's more understandable in terms of a PvE (*) model, but I admit I see it as immature. One key design goal is to try to make many strategies viable. For example, if you've ever played a transmuter, you know that in a group you can wear a number of hats, depending on what the group is doing and who is in it. Maybe you focus on enhancing your groupmates and rest while they fight. Maybe you assist in combat by maledicting the foes. Maybe you just help with offense/damage because you have a healer to take care of the tank. Maybe you rotate between roles because one overtaxes your mana whereas the other doesn't. (Trivial examples: You can safely Accelerate your tank once in a while, but if you try it 24/7 the drawbacks can catch up with you. It's worth spending mana on the Repair abilities if a healer or paladin or bard isn't around, but otherwise it's often better to use that mana elsewhere.) Etc.

That's pretty fun as a player. Compared to, say, a pre-revamp thief (Circle! Circle! Circle!), you're making a lot more decisions, and a higher premium is being placed on skill and creativity. You're playing chess while the other guy plays tic-tac-toe. Ever see adults play tic-tic-toe?

Thing is, it only takes one or two broken skills to make a character really boring, tactically. Sometimes we blunt one skill, and it makes 5 other ones viable. If Chop did double current damage and lagged the victim for two rounds, you probably wouldn't need to practice too many other offensive skills. But yet, if DoubleLagChop existed and we "nerfed" it into Chop, we both know there would be whining of epic proportions.

This works more globally as well. For example, elf paladin used to be a joke-- you only played one if you wanted the RP angle, or wanted practice regearing. Storm paladin was all that and the proverbial bag of chips, especially once you heroed and could largely ignore the XP penalty. The various changes we made (which created niches within the Paladin skillset for other attributes) hurt storm paladin, but along the way they made dwarf, human, and elf paladin all look viable, and I could make a case for each of the four. (If you've ever played on a MUD with poorly balanced classes, this issue is familiar to you. "I guess I'll play my 80th consecutive warrior.")

Old: I want to play a paladin. Might as well pick storm again.
New: Let me think about my play style, how much offense vs. defense I want...

That kind of choice often only crops up when you bring down the strongest option. (You can lift all other options up to the one strongest option, but then you effectively elevate the paladin class relative to all other classes, and need to tweak all of them too. Arms races are bad-- you end up changing everything just to get back to status quo.)

In summary, I wish the players would snap out of the simplistic "nerf = bad, enhancement = good" mindset. Even if a particular change impacts your current character.... people often play a character for a month or two (many less, some more), but play CF for years. Take a change for what most of them are (a temporary and minor bump up or down), and try to step back and look things over from a broader perspective.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): PvP (Player vs. Player) most people are familiar with, but PvE (Player vs. Environment) is its counterpart-- the things that change how a player competes against NPCs, areas, etc. Almost no changes purely change only PvP or PvE, however.

>- If it's a deliberate change to design (up-powering or
>down-powering an ability, etc.), I'm more prone to announce
>it. I admit I'm more likely to announce up-powering than
>down-powering, but that's because I generally have to deal
>with less crying, and not because I have some overriding goal
>in mind.

So you'd rather not tell your playerbase and treat them like children and assume no one will -ever- notice the difference. Wise idea.

>Old: I want to play a paladin. Might as well pick
>storm again.
>New: Let me think about my play style, how much offense
>vs. defense I want...

Huh? There's nothing in any of the helpfiles that indicate that storm giants or elves are any better anything remotely paladinish in the slightest.
If you'd announced the changes i might realise there was a difference.

>In summary, I wish the players would snap out of the
>simplistic "nerf = bad, enhancement = good" mindset.

And I wish you'd snap out of the mindset of believing you best not tell us anything in case you're asked to justify it. We're all adults here.

=============================================================
So you'd rather not tell your playerbase and treat them like children and assume no one will -ever- notice the difference. Wise idea.
============================================================

Well we tend to act like children a lot... Do you ever actually read the forums here and on dio's?

============================================================
Huh? There's nothing in any of the helpfiles that indicate that storm giants or elves are any better anything remotely paladinish in the slightest.
If you'd announced the changes i might realise there was a difference.
===========================================================

These changes were announced on the MOTD at the time they were made. To summerize for you paladin skills became more dependant on either strength or dex. Obviously this means races with higher dex became better at some things and races with higher strength got better at others. Paladin suplications are also not even across the board for the races I am not sure wether its based on charisma or int but an elf lands sups more often and they hurt a lot more then any storm giants. For reference as a dwarf with retribution up my wraths did not seem significantly better then another elf paladin of the same ranks wraths without retribution.

=========================================================
>In summary, I wish the players would snap out of the
>simplistic "nerf = bad, enhancement = good" mindset.

And I wish you'd snap out of the mindset of believing you best not tell us anything in case you're asked to justify it. We're all adults here
========================================================

The assumption that we are all adults here is exactly that an assumption, while the cf playerbase is traditionally college age and up there are still younger players out there (a recent imm was only 18 years old for example). The reasons why every little change doesn't get announced can be found in the threads posted by valg and nep but I will give you a little list that they have given time and time again.

1.) Changes are made almost daily and not all of them are significant enough to warrant mention. If they tweak up bash 1% based on some random factor they are not going to mention it, if they change the way the bash skill as a whole functions then they would mention it.

2.) Not all changes affect the whole mud and they might announce it only to the subset who currently use what is being changed. An example of this is gates of the forge was tweaked but only players who had it were told, other players had to discover on their own.

3.) Whine fests, all to often changes result in these and frankly I don't blame the imms for not wanting to have to deal with them.

4.) Announcements can be made in different ways, some get posted to the boards others are adressed in the motd and others through echos or what not. Just because you today can't find them doesn't mean they were not announced at some point.

Now, Graham's tone was a bit acerbic, but it seems it comes from a perceived lack of respect and trust from staff to players regarding changes.

>1.) Changes are made almost daily and not all of them are significant enough to warrant mention. If they tweak up bash 1% based on some random factor they are not going to mention it, if they change the way the bash skill as a whole functions then they would mention it.

Wouldn't you say 'difficulty of practicing cheap shot' or 'autoassist now lags' (to name two recent examples) would count as high-profile changes? Perhaps the staff vs players competing desires for 'the minimum ooc info the pbase needs to know to preserve the black box' vs 'things players want to know to use their skills intelligently, and not die like a chump' need to be reevaluated, and perhaps a better middle ground agreed upon.

>2.) Not all changes affect the whole mud and they might announce it only to the subset who currently use what is being changed. An example of this is gates of the forge was tweaked but only players who had it were told, other players had to discover on their own.

Well, that's fine, I guess. Could they give greater consideration updating the helpfile to use more specific/accurate language if the new difference in mechanics is significant?

>3.) Whine fests, all to often changes result in these and frankly I don't blame the imms for not wanting to have to deal with them.

I personally feel that the tone lately has been quite civil and courteous, as championed especially by Isildur and others, with the hope of fostering a greater openness, a friendly and professional dialogue between the staff and players. Also, I believe if the imms would strictly reply only to mature, constructive and courteous posts, and ignore the "whiners" (remember, at the end of the day, the whiners just want to have fun, too. If we create an atmosphere of maturity, I bet they'll start adapting and doing some growing up to match their peers), that the imms wouldn't feel threatened by posting changes, because, if they're good ones, they'll be able (if they feel the need) to justify/explain in a constructive environment, and tune out the unhelpful, accusatory and fallacious posts.

>4.) Announcements can be made in different ways, some get posted to the boards others are adressed in the motd and others through echos or what not. Just because you today can't find them doesn't mean they were not announced at some point.

Laxman, some of us may miss some things occasionally, but we're not stupid (take the cheapshot/autoassist example). I know some things get explained/revealed in posts on Gameplay, but I don't know of a good way to compile all that. I guess it just remains to the careful and observant player to be observant and careful on the forums, as well. But important things shouldn't be buried, they ought to be announced forthrightly in the spirit of "The Level Playing Field" or of "Helping Players Be Smart by Having The Facts".

>Wouldn't you say 'difficulty of practicing cheap shot' or
>'autoassist now lags' (to name two recent examples) would
>count as high-profile changes?

I certainly didn't consider them to be.

The cheap shot thing, for me, was rather like putting a lock on your second story window and having all of your house guests complain it was now impossible to get into the house.

From what I've gathered about that particular change, it was definitely to remedy the intent of the skill. I've no problems with that, but I can see both sides of the argument for announcing or not.

"You cheesy jerks have received your last cheesy cheap shot skill %! Suffer now, for abusing the system!"

and

"Am I smoking purple crack? The ONLY POSSIBLE way I know to improve at cheap shot doesn't work!!!" (note, some sarcasm)

I don't think it would be bad to announce, to encourage playing non-cheezily and getting in line with the spirit and intent of the skill/class. I do understand that the coder would definitely have some ire to vent, though.

Did any of my other points sound reasonable, out of curiosity?

Sure, people probably complain less when they don't know what's happening. Sort of like Romanians never complained under Caeusescu's (sp?) rule.