User preference plays a big part in the aspects of CF that a player will enjoy. There's nothing wrong with people who enjoy FPS games, or whatever POS is. I've never known any of those games to have the long term staying power CF had though. If I can think of the difference, it is in the RP and immersion that CF provides. Again, PK is a component of that, but like most facets of CF, the draw is in the totality of the game, not just a single component. And I find the core of CF's draw to be the immersion and interaction between players. Others play solely for the PK, and that's their choice, but I think there are different player styles in CF.

The willingness to focus so much on that aspect of PK for me rips out the whole point of playing CF. I played bards for a simple reason, they were pretty versatile and could adapt to most things. I could stay alive and hold my own in fights against 90% of the mud, outside of when I went battle, and that was enough for me, even if in 900 hours I have 5 PKs. My ability to play to age death consistently is largely because my focus isn't on the PK, which means most of my logins saw zero fights. It's not that I lack the knowledge or ability to engage in PK (maybe not to the level of you or someone like Marcus who I consider the greatest ever) but after what amounts to a ridiculous amount of time playing bards (guessing 4000 hours), I just became far more passive about it. I know I could go gather preps, scrolls, talismans, and increase my PK successes. But I didn't care about that, so I didn't bother. I'd rather spend ten minutes chatting in market square than gathering a crimson scourge scroll to use in a later PK. I never met Venara, though I'm going to say I'm 80% sure I know who the player is and so I'm not surprised by the differing playstyle.

I'd agree with stealth feeling broken because confrontations are too controlled. When one side has the ability to determine the time and place of engagement, it sort of sucks. And I've known far more characters to forsake RP for fear of dying than be willing to die for the sake of RP, so the whole argument of strike their cabal or whatever falls flat. Again, players will differ, and not everyone will act this way.

The problem is for all the variation, the majority of CF people won't utilize it because the incentive is not there to do so. Krunk bashed Salyeris. Period, end of story, elf corpse. And ultimately, why wouldn't you? The Krunk v. Salyeris is a very bad example to point to when it comes to diversity of tactics. I used what I could think of. Went with a staff, didn't work. Tried certain songs (if I got a command off), never really worked. Ultimately, if you didn't bash, you were an idiot. But, being an elf bard in the village, you can berserk, which causes auto attack, you were a size larger, which meant to chance to reliably sleep/fiend, you have no fear of being lagged by me such that you had zero issues in controlling the fight, I'm limited in that reduce/enlarge and all the other unexpected stuff is completely unavailable to a villager. I suppose I could have sat underwater for ever while you were logged in or said screw RP and just went to a remote area where I would never have to deal with you, or had every villager gang Krunk. But really, Commander of the village, you throw down against people, even when it's instant death. Maybe as a berserker I could have thirsted and had a little more success, who knows, but the perks of a scout don't help in that fight.

Or I just play the RP, accept that their are builds that are the rock to my scissors, and when Krunk shows up, I die in a one sided fight. Then I move on with my char. Which is what I did. I killed Xasivus somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 times, with zero deaths to him, and he was the one that always came at me for the most part. That's just CF. Absent maybe a lich or a juiced AP, nobody gets to be Rambo.

Maybe the difference is really this. You enjoy PK, so you like to focus on the nuances of the encounter. I don't play for PK, so I don't care about focusing or refining those aspects. My enjoyment in playing a bard was never tied to how well I could perform in PK, it was always tied to having a versatile character aimed towards the RP side of CF. Bards are a natural group mate to people because of the versatility. Wood elf because they are neutral, so really no natural enemies and they have the best stats.

I won't be playing CF again for a very long time if ever, but by that time I imagine I'll have to relearn bards, if they even still exist.