Posted by Dhernarn on December 19, 2000 at 12:32:21:
In Reply to: I suppose CF needs more players... Not that I know how to get them (some text) posted by Rune(VIP) on December 19, 2000 at 01:36:32:
> Do any of you remember the time, when there was a cap of 110 people on at the same time, and you sometimes you had to try to connect for 15 minutes to get a slot?
This, I feel addresses the points you have, as well as the points below this part.
Well, I remember, back in the day when there was 110+ people on regularly. Then again, that was also before the forums and such.
The forums have proven to be more destructive than beneficial to CF now. Nothing is a secret any more, really, and a lot of people just use this Forum as a place to get more of their answers that they could get just by playing the class/race combination that they would before.
In the Second Age you didn't have that. You'd have people that would power-rank up to 51 without a skill perfected and do fine, perhaps because the powergaming was not at the degree that it is now, but, again, I think it was a good thing, because people were still having fun. Now, it's very disillusioning to see someone post a log and have a bunch of folks immediately jump upon the bandwagon criticising the person on what they did wrong in their own number-crunching way.
Seriously, we weren't concerned about what a bash specifically did, or a trip, or a crushing hand, or how long specifically hold lasted for. We were more concerned about the fun, in-game stuff, because IRC, ICQ and the forums didn't exist then. And, well, that was good. Because you didn't have CF taken to the pseudo-science it is now.
Really, the first time many Second Age players got into CF, we were getting killed nine times a day or something by Shadows, running around dying to the elder druid near the Forest of Nowhere, and the galaxy still existed.
I'm not hinting that the area changes are bad, in fact, I think they're a wonderful aspect of the game. Turning the game into something that is truly CF immortal-made is wonderful. It is these forums that I think are destructive to the game, especially when everyone wants the cheat sheet on this or that.
Now, I know I'm going to get flamed on this, but really, if you take away the forum and IRC and ICQ, and dumb down what people see, what are you going to have? You're going to have people that try to power-game, but then can't quantify it into numbers, so their empirical sense of judgement in this case is lost. If you take away damage qualifiers (e.g. DISMEMBER and MUTILATE) and instead say... "Soandso scores a grievous wound with his axe." Seriously, in reality, you're not going to know exactly how badly a person is hurt. Healers, perhaps, could know that. Other neo-priests, to a lesser extent. Fighter-man-at-arms types should know how hard they're hitting a person, but not know how badly they're hurt.
Keep wimpy at the same percentile command, and take the report command out. It would seriously make for a dumbing down of the game, I'd agree, but perhaps it would restore some of the mystique back.
> CF seems to be a better game now, so I wonder why there is less players.
> A few things I think might be part of the reason:
> 1. You have to spend too much time practicing with too many classes (In contrast to conjurers, who have to spend almost none, and still seem to beat the living shit out of most people)
Conjurers, and shamans to a lesser extent, are stupidly overpowered. Conjurers certainly, because they can conjure their beasties, win with them losing very little health (archon) or win by just outdamaging their opponent (devil/demon/angel as second servitor). The idea that you can get two servitors to follow you pretty much unconditionally (save for devils) is ridiculous. There should be some sort of drawback to servitors, and really, there's not, other than that they can attack you if you're not careful.
Shamans are amazing for the fact that they can hit as hard (if not harder) than fighters, have both shield block and parry, and have the best dispel spell in the game. On top of that, they have two supplications at their highest rank which tend to work a whole lot that can completely shut down an opponent. Wither is arguably very powerful against men-at-arms types (I'm sure you could find something of a rebuttal, but the truth is, not every warrior-type is going to be wearing 15 or more in strength items at hero). Rot is just amazing, it will completely shut down a mage a lot of the time (if the mage isn't completely geared out for con). It's rough fighting them, honestly. On top of that, sanc/prot and cure crit can soak up a lot of damage.
I agree that too much of the game is focused on practicing. In Ultima Online (which I played for about a week and then totally got bored with) the game revolves around skill gain. It sucks. There's no one that roleplays there, and because roleplaying isn't enforced, the game suffers from being a Nintendo copout.
> 2. It is too hard to be a newbie, you have to live with being a punching bag for too long. Off course there should be things you only learn as an experienced player, but shield, aura, barrier rods and stuff like it, just gives the already better players an even bigger advantage.
Well, I believe it was addressed above, but CF has a hard learning curve. You're not going to know everything, much less how to go from place to place, overnight. A huge amount of rooms, coupled with unexpected pitfalls everywhere, it's why I played this game to start with and fell in love with it.
As I said above, if the game had all of the possible OOC knowledge sources removed, all the current newbies coming into the game would be on something of an equal playing field. Of course, that's completely utopic-sounding, and isn't going to happen, however, if something could be implemented to change this, that would be great.