Poking my head in...

[Telufial]

Haven't played in ages now it seems like.  Just started lurking around again today.  Looks like this place is in about as bad of shape as the place I migrated to after the pbase dwindled during my playtimes here.  Anything fun or exciting happening?  Are all the gate keys to fun stuff still held by invisible immortals?  How hard is ranking up a character and training now adays with the 2-3 people I see on in my playtimes?  Are there times of the day where there is a servicable number of players online to actually have fun?  New areas, classes?  Whats the haps.

[Fool_Hardy]

Ranking and training takes about 20-25 hrs. Faster for some, hard not to pin and train in under 50 hrs. Welcome home.

[Ulmusdorn]

Pinning and training can be done in less then 20 hours easily these days.

Gate keys held by imms? Nah. I haven't said no to an application in ages

 

[Lloth]

Ask Nexus how much, or if at all, I interfere with anything they're doing. Hell, most of the time I feel bad for Araethil cause I kinda just tossed him to the sharks. Sink or swim.

Ask Watcher how much Ulmusdorn interferes with them.

Or Knight with Erelei. Herald with Acele. Don't see the others much because of my availability time, but I have never heard any Imm talk about how they did, or are going to, interfere with politics. And I've been doing this for years. Only time I can think of that could be construed as it from the outside is when I negotiated directly with Tempirion and 2 Savants, with Draug and Araethil (My 2 Elders at the time), a ceasefire - by introducing them all to a few breadcrumbs for a major subplot I had been cooking up with Acele. So maybe that counts? I dunno. When it comes to cabal, we give direction, tasks, and considerations. Orders when necessary (like - attempt to retrieve the item before you depart the lands). 


What are some times you've felt that an immortal has interfered with politics (outside of preventing rule-breaking: i.e. attacking allied cabal members as a form of surprise war)?

[f0xx]

49 minutes ago, Ulmusdorn said:

Gate keys held by imms? Nah. I haven't said no to an application in ages

I think you misunderstand.

The sole fact that one needs approval to send an application is a gate keeping process.

Other than that, I am not even sure why you even vote on applications, unless you are the only member of your cabal, otherwise I find that quite odd.

[aaa]

I miss sending off an application at level 15. 

Voting on applications used to make sense, the cabal members themselves were the gate keepers. 

If you were applying for a cabal, you'd seek out members of that cabal to introduce yourselves and potentially secure their vote. I thoroughly enjoyed that aspect as well as the squire system in Knight. 

[Lloth]

I actually brought back the Squire system when I ran Knight.

It was ultimately abandoned by the cabal members each time.

[aaa]

That's a shame, I quite recently tried to Rp a squire scenario in savant as Elithior. 

A shame your experiences showed that people weren't interested. I'd definitely like it as an optional thing in future. 

[Ulmusdorn]

It was a joke. Clearly it zipped over the head of such a touchy subject.

[f0xx]

2 hours ago, Lloth said:

I actually brought back the Squire system when I ran Knight.

It was ultimately abandoned by the cabal members each time.

I don't see a problem with that. It's the knight wannabes that should be out looking for a mentor, not the other way around.

[Ulmusdorn]

I remember my first ever 50 was a Knight who was squired. 

The fact you had to suck up to a knight was amazing I thought.

[Telufial]

Yes, by gate keeping - I meant applying, waiting, sitting, grinding... not interfering with political cabal stuff.  I think with my last character I played almost 100 hours between member and trusted in Savant.  It was ridiculous.  And most of that time I had almost nothing to do, except grind out RP points in blissful falls and with journals.  I also had a demon applicant after that - that I waited over 50 hours before saying screw it.

[Trick]

4 minutes ago, Telufial said:

Yes, by gate keeping - I meant applying, waiting, sitting, grinding... not interfering with political cabal stuff.  I think with my last character I played almost 100 hours between member and trusted in Savant.  It was ridiculous.  And most of that time I had almost nothing to do, except grind out RP points in blissful falls and with journals.  I also had a demon applicant after that - that I waited over 50 hours before saying screw it.

That's not going to change. Players have asked for cabals to be back in player hands, automation up to Trusted, and most of everything else you've mentioned. The Staff have  denied it. I don't know if its a loss of power thing, if its a fear of OOC circles thing, if its due to some other abuse they foresee, but its not gonna happen.

Players have and are leaving over this, but it still hasn't been enough to remove these barriers. I don't understand the mindset of denying the players of a game something they clearly want.

[Lloth]

OOC circles is a big, actually colossal, part of it. 

Trust me, if there was a healthy approach to having to do less work, I would be all for it. 

Another thing is that we make changes, given a ton of freedom... then it becomes "that was too fast!" Or "that's not fair!" Or the RP stops the moment some players get what PK edges they want out of promotions and such.

Not to mention the unfair disadvantage leveraged against those with less free time. Say somebody has 4-5 more hours per day that they can log in. Those with less time in the automated approach are less likely to get higher promotions simply due to those slots being taken up by characters that meet those standards in less than a week. 

[Telufial]

Automation free's up the waiting.  And trying to match your playtimes with the Imms in charge of whatever thing you want is difficult.  The waiting process is what kills it for most people I think

[Fool_Hardy]

If you were an alcoholic you may often ask why do they pass laws to keep me from drinking in public, driving home from the bar, or even decide the total alcohol content allowed in your ale.

And you have every right to question these things.

At the end of the day the rules and policies are implemented for the general protection of all players, not the overall enjoyment of one.

Think about the concept of people voting for your RP rewards, someone is going to call his friend and say hey "poke" me if you ever need a vote.

Currently, I have waited over sixty hours for a promotion, and still think it better than being blocked from promotions because the Leader and the Elder decided IRL that they will control the Faction forever. And yes this did happen, and yes, it would happen again.

As for autoinduction. What if I do not intend to join the Cabal yet? What if I am a hopeful wizard who seeks to become a psi before entering the cabal? What if I am a member of battle seeking to become a crusader before I go to war with that dark tower? Now an automated opportunity to apply would be something I would not oppose.

While these things are some of the reasons people leave, lets look at it with the mindset, that we do not want to bring back one vet and lose two current active players.

I for one would like to see some of the "slot" numbers raised. Why do we have a limit on the number of Undead, Vampires, Crusaders, ect? I think the original concept was that no one would ever play the normal races if everyone could play a q-race. I am not sure that is true, nor am I convinced that q-races are the best choice for every cabal/class combination. Instead of limiting the number of Q-slots available to the player base, why not limit the number of q-slots available to a specific IP. None of us needs a vampire, a crusader, a lich, and an Avatar, but if we eliminate the world parameters and place them on players, every player could have one of them.

Just my opinion.

[Lloth]

I have always had the experience with the recent staff, on both sides of the process, that the one in charge of an application will change their playtime to meet the player's. At the very least, in the cases of extreme time zone difference, a compromise somewhere in the middle.

[Kyzarius]

13 minutes ago, Fool_Hardy said:

I for one would like to see some of the "slot" numbers raised. Why do we have a limit on the number of Undead, Vampires, Crusaders, ect? I think the original concept was that no one would ever play the normal races if everyone could play a q-race. I am not sure that is true, nor am I convinced that q-races are the best choice for every cabal/class combination. Instead of limiting the number of Q-slots available to the player base, why not limit the number of q-slots available to a specific IP. None of us needs a vampire, a crusader, a lich, and an Avatar, but if we eliminate the world parameters and place them on players, every player could have one of them.

its already limited to 1 qthing per player, and it sucks.  

I want to roll a crusader, but I cant, I have a qthing already..so eventually like what happened with Lelleiala, I delete my character just so I can play the other class. 

 

Or like I did with Rathanous, I delete...then decide the arduous task of rolling, leveling, applying, waiting, waiting, reminding I applied, writting journals, getting it, leveling, waiting, waiting, waiting getting into my cabal, sitting for 20 hours online scratching my ass waiting...waiting....(except for some RARE occasions).  I just leave for 3 years. 

[Telufial]

Is there still a chat system on the forum at all?

 

[Fool_Hardy]

I think that limitation is set with the intent that you will focus your time on this "special" character you have asked the heavens to invest in.

Its all about the time investment. Maybe you have enough time to play to maintain the required logged hours for 2 or 3 qthings, other players may only barely have enough time to maintain one. The rule likely keeps the few players with hundreds of hours a month to play from monopolizing the qstuff, and keeping those players with a few hours a week from ever having an opportunity to play one.

Sometimes we focus so much on what happens to us in game, we fail to see what our characters do to the world at large, or the effect we have on other players we may never even interact with personally, such as when we get a slot and someone else does not.

[tassinvegeta]

1 hour ago, Lloth said:

 

[Trick]

42 minutes ago, Fool_Hardy said:

I think that limitation is set with the intent that you will focus your time on this "special" character you have asked the heavens to invest in.

Its all about the time investment. Maybe you have enough time to play to maintain the required logged hours for 2 or 3 qthings, other players may only barely have enough time to maintain one. The rule likely keeps the few players with hundreds of hours a month to play from monopolizing the qstuff, and keeping those players with a few hours a week from ever having an opportunity to play one.

Sometimes we focus so much on what happens to us in game, we fail to see what our characters do to the world at large, or the effect we have on other players we may never even interact with personally, such as when we get a slot and someone else does not.

The counter to that argument would be that if a person doesn't want to invest so much time in a single character, but in the game itself and experience as much as they can then that should be their right as a player, right? If they choose to play around with a bunch of different combos, characters, and RP then you must expect that certain things will not happen or you won't be the target of dedicated plots, an important figure in the history of FL, or someone that will make the Hall of Fame.

I've rarely, rarely ever had more than one character at a time because I am the type of player that chooses to dedicate all the time I do have to play TO that character and really go as far as I can. When I make a character, I intend on that character being leader, tattooed, and everything else for the most part, but I also understand that other players don't like to be tied down to one character and want to experience the game from multiple characters at the same time.

More thoughts...

My stance to all of this is very simple. Do what you have fun doing. If you playing 3-4 characters back to back in the course of a month is how you enjoy the game, then do it and have fun. If you want to be like f0xx or I and dedicate so much time to a character and develop the "best" version of that character you can, then do that and have fun.

The ONLY time I will be against someone having fun is if their fun comes at the cost of another player's. IE: Full looting because you can.

If opening everything means people have more fun, then I am willing to forgo my own opinions on Qraces/classes to let that happen. Let's be honest, who is the last person to actually get denied anything? The issue isn't with denial or approval, but with waiting so fucking long to get it. I rolled a new char and thought about doing a QRace, but opted to not do it because of a few reasons, but the big one was the wait time. Its not fun sitting at 30 and waiting. It sucks.

Someone said in another thread that we shouldn't be watched before we apply, but more closely after we get it and that's a GREAT way of looking at it. I say we lower the standards to get it, but up the standards to keep it. You want Vampire? Okay, we don't have too many running around(which I think is important) so you can have it. Have a history and description done so people can get an idea of who you are and its your's. Any slip up, and you lose it. You can work your way back TO it, but it'll be harder.

[egreir]

Whats up telufial!!!! man, wish I could remember which char/forum handle it was that you and I had a blast with...Yaesiln maybe? Don't think it was Dharg yet...hah, good to see you back!  I hope you stick around but the concerns you're voicing still exist sadly.  Hope you aren't trying to play a caster/communer lol

[Telufial]

3 hours ago, egreir said:

Whats up telufial!!!! man, wish I could remember which char/forum handle it was that you and I had a blast with...Yaesiln maybe? Don't think it was Dharg yet...hah, good to see you back!  I hope you stick around but the concerns you're voicing still exist sadly.  Hope you aren't trying to play a caster/communer lol

 

Oh communers are my fav.. whats wrong with them?

 

[Trick]

15 minutes ago, Telufial said:

 

Oh communers are my fav.. whats wrong with them?

 

Nothing is wrong with any of them. Like always, the first half of their ranking experience is pretty shitty because they struggle to kill mobs, but guild quests are faster anyways unless you have a group of three, so its not a big deal, really.