Some people joke that Cabdru is the only person to have ever won at CF. What is he known for:

1) Winning a role contest and getting +1 to max Int as a fire giant.
2) Getting one of the best sets of eq ever seen on an a-p.
3) Killing hordes of people quickly as seen on the PBF.
4) Getting a large unholy.

Those are all examples of game mechanic rewards. They are built-in ways to gain rewards through a very specific way of playing the game. That's what game mechanics do. They tell you how to win the game. Does anyone remember Cabdru's roleplaying? Does anyone talk about it?

You mentioned achievements in your post below, such as getting leadership and getting your name on the monument. Again, these are game mechanics that reward specific ways of playing the game. Thankfully, these are based off of in-game, consistent roleplaying. We need more ways of encouraging this. More ways of guiding players on how to play the game. It is a way of communicating expectations to the playerbase, and rewarding them when they meet those expectations. If you kill X mobs and gain Y experience you gain a level and learn a new skill. Expectation, results, reward.


"isn't recognition from fellow players reward enough for good roleplay?"

It will often lose out to getting equipment* and edges and power for pking. Once you're in a cabal, there are no more game mechanics for rewarding good roleplayers except for the elite that go for leadership/tattoos/quest abilities. Instead, the Imms have added a ton of rewards for playing solo.


"Entitlement is the big reason why. People feel self entitled"

Yeah, I used to feel that way too. I was an Imm once. Made it to level 56 before I left so I could graduate college. But you know my biggest regret as an Imm? Missed empowerments. People were taking the time to come up with original character ideas, roll them up, play, and pray to me. But if they were in an off time, I always missed them. I hated that so much. Even today, I tell myself if I ever Imm again I don't want an empowered religion. Here's the thing. It isn't rocket science. I explained this to the other Imms at the time, many who are still Imms today. I recognized the problem. I tried to come up with a solution, as half-baked as it was: Combine religions under larger categories (Sun, Shadow, etc) and allow any Imm under the larger category to empower any other one. They could still follow the individual Imms under that for tattoos and such. You want to know what I was told? Empowerment was to be a one-on-one between player and Imm and he (the influential Imm who shall remain nameless) wouldn't want someone else empowering his followers. That was like 15 years ago. I think they do have a system now where other Imms can empower each others followers today, but, damn, they are so hard-headed and take the players for granted. Entitlement? Yeah, the players and the Imms alike. Get off your high horse.

I'm not saying they should be at the beck and call of the players, but they should strive to make sure every single player has a consistent and minimally good experience. But that requires talking about expectations. I love the idea of edges, it is just flawed implementation. It's not "play anyway you want" which would be great, because you can get more edges for doing everything. It's "you have to play every way" to get the most you can. Compare it to weapon specs. Imagine each weapon spec skill was unlocked by killing a big mob somewhere in Thera. Would you consider that "kill a mob and get any skill you want" or would you consider that "I have to kill all these mobs to get my skills"? The edge system is telling the players they need to do everything to get the most edges.

It's an honest mistake to make. But how long have edges been in? How much have people complained? It's time to own up that it was a mistake and let people get edges doing any of the paths (obs/exp, pk/cabal, roles/roleplay), with no bonus for completing more than one. Then it would truly be a play any way you want and get rewards.


*Getting equipment for most people is actually best done socially.

- Paul