Posted by Leorinth on March 23, 2000 at 18:21:00:
When I first started playing CF, Empire was the most hated (I mean it still is but it's only a mosquito bite pain as compared to the past when it was a lion's one. Now, you just flick the mosquito away from pestering you) and most abused with Centurions along Eastern Roads. Even after killing one, you find another pair along the Eastern roads and so forth. The masters were still on their own, learning and studying and Arbies don't care much along the Eastern Road (The Imperials were told not to touch the Arbies in their work). Sylvans are nearly non-existant too or hiding in forests. The Imperial ruled those days and I HATED them. Holy Knights with ragers usually group to kill Imperials but they were too many.
I remember them hunting me, a warrior, by putting one before the crossroads and then put another near Galadon after you passed them and shit, you can see 5-6 pkers summon/walking towards you. You'll shit in your pants unless you have teleport/recall. That's where ragers dwindled to a lousy cabal where people con-died before hero because they cannot teleport or recall. **All because of a law about fighting one-on-one and about honour.**
I believe it was in Thror's time when this rule was changed in order to deal with the Imperials who gang-bang. Ragers can gangbang if and only if when provoked by gangbanging Imperials and against magic-users. Well, for a period of time (I was playing an Imperial assassin), the cabal war seems to be balanced. But then with rager awesome skills, many Imperials died in the war. I mean it takes about 3 Imperials to kill a rager (transie, necro, hasted warrior, etc). Soon people began to flock to the Village to see what's making the ragers hold their fighting prowess.
There the balance swung towards the Village. Tower skills were changed too. Imperials dwindled. Nobody cared about being oathed. Suddenly there was a bunch of rager wanna-be. And they were taken in for the lack of numbers. Time soon give them a strong hold as they ranked and reached heroes. The cabal now is awesomely powerful with numbers and changed abilities too (with 3 sections). Ragers have certain healing powers (so blindness, diseases, harmful spells are useless. So are invoker spells with spellbane and spell dodge.) I too remember ragers bitching for more powers due to the small number of villages against a large enemy. Powers changed but numbers now are plenty. These constitute many of the problems (not all though) about ragers and such being too over-powered and gangbang which we are discussing now.
If I could suggest, I'd say we put back the one-on-one honour fights because the tide has swung in favour of the Village for too long. When people start dying alone to gangbang, they will stop playing ragers and flock to Impeials/Masters or even Arbiters. Well, it's a whole paradiagm shift for the Village.
My stand is most people will flock to the cabal with the most numbers. Chances are they will reach hero and not die so easily. It's like the mafia.
Jack hopes the Imperials will come back strong. He kinda misses them.