The Game, the Cabal, and You

[Manual Labour]

I agree with F0xx and Anume here.

I've played on and off for 15 years.

In the beginning it took me forever to get anything. The game literally started at lvl 1 because I could never even guarantee I'd pinn, let alone cabal and get T.

Nowadays everything is handed out on a silver platter and instead of being grateful people complain things still take too long...

Once upon a time being caballed was a privilege not a right.

Once upon a time Trusted was earned, not taken for granted.

I just don't understand the entitled attitude some people have.

"It's a game, it should be fun, gimme everything right away" this is a terrible attitude, not only does it create an environment with meaningless rewards, it also makes the game less fun for you by removing sense of accomplishment.

People also complain about RP rewards, there are players who call writing notes and journals "doing homework". I sometimes wonder what people think this game is...It is a PK RP enforced game, playing the game is not a chore, if you feel it is a chore I do not think it is the game's fault, I think it is a matter of looking at the game wrong.

You cannot and are not supposed to be able to WIN at FL, the best you can hope to do is making a lasting mark with one (or many) characters.

There will never be a way to qualify what people are doing with a timed measurement, giving anything based purely on hours is stupid as Anume pointed out, anyone can just AFK idle their way to whatever rank is allowed in this manner.

I would go a step in the other direction if I were to change anything. I would remove the hour requirements for cabal promotions entirely, and I would make every cabal promo merit based.

[f0xx]

38 minutes ago, Celerity said:

@f0xx Lowering the number of cabals is NOT the same as lowering the slots in each cabal. Not even close. A gross misunderstanding of the suggestion AND problem.

Oh it seems I misundestood this.

So the suggestion is to lower the number of cabals?

I've missed the original suggestion.... but what cabals do you wish to "cut off"?

Don't you think this will greatly hurt the endgame and replayability FL has? 

Can you actually link me to the original suggestion?

 

[egreir]

It’s hilarious to me how far apart so many of us on how this game should operate. Gotta love it. I don’t play games to “work to earn” stuff from someone else. I play games to have fun while unlocking content that has clear cut definitions and basis for it. But hey to each their own I guess.  But there’s a reason I often login to this game and see only myself online.

[egreir]

I think what i love most is everyone acting like they think this will somehow bring such detrimental impact to the game lmao  '

 

There's 2 people logged in right now.....you really think making this game easier and more accessible is gonna hurt? lol

[egreir]

They are both T in their cabal too, ironically

[hotspring monkey]

@egreir

Yeah, the reason the world is empty sometimes is due to timezones  Well, lets see how long this takes to get this msg approved so I'm relevant still in the conversation. PS: I'll not post sausage sucking jokes no more. Discord is for that.

The game starts for me at rank 1. Though, the shadowy RP is likely not there just yet. People seem to ignore you quite a lot till you near the 50th rank too. Anyway, my qsomethings RP and play with themselves alone, like me at home. So I do homework RP. If I log in at evening, its quite busy time in FL. 

The mornings not so, except if NZ is active. 

[Venom]

For me the game starts when you reach 50, not when become Trusted. Getting gear, improving gear, fighting as Inductee and Member against Trusted and Elder IS part of the game and sometimes I hate it, sometimes I love it, but this is the game we play. Otherwise why not join cabal in 30 lvl, waiting to become V or T then reach 50?! Or why not become instantly T if the game starts at that point?

No, I personally do not likes it. I love to go through all of the ranks, getting new spells/skills test it with my current race/class how do they feel compared to some other previous character for example or in battle against opposite faction. Usually it is not the same combo of the opposite cabal you must fight, sometimes it is mages, sometimes it is warrior classes and if your previous character in the same cabal had some combo as enemy it is not sure that you will have the same combo enemy with this character. So getting "slowly" from rank to rank and feeling the progress by getting further is part of the game for me as well.

I very much feel like 10 hours per rank is quite enough and fine.

So what is next? Leveling is too slow? Training must be done faster? Gearing is too slow?

Want to to do everyting automated like sitting and temple getting gear or simply kill 1 mob and you are master of every skill, or kill 5 mobs and go to 50, becuse ... "the game starts after that"?

No, no, no, no. I personally like as it is set currently.

[f0xx]

9 minutes ago, egreir said:

But there’s a reason I often login to this game and see only myself online.

We can agree on that.

Things are more complex than "too long wait for cabal promos" though.

[egreir]

I agree cabal promos definitely is not the singular answer. It's a piece of a much larger pie.

[Djriacen]

This game, to me, is about writing. It's a prompt for creativity that also comes with executable mechanics. It's textual D&D and the idea that it you need to be the badass PK monster who is Trusted or Elder right when you finish training for your guild is not only OOC, but terrible for any sort of longevity. I see talk about the mechanics as if that's what drove players like me away when, in reality, it was the attitude and OOC hatred I saw. I left because I no longer saw the rich storylines that I fell in love with (I am historically bad at them and love reading the imaginations of others. sure it was still happening, but I just saw it less often). I no longer saw the incredible RP/PK monsters who would enrich the experience of the less experience as the norm. The last thing I want is this game to be expedited like WoW - that sort of time grind/pay-to-win is what kills the magic. I guess I missed when the game went from "Toughen up Princess" to "change this."

[Venom]

For the last month I've tried to login in different times , morning, afternoon and evening and 90% of the times I've had enemy of my cabal/clan and several people around. If you play 24/7 at some point you might stay alone, dunno.

[egreir]

It was easier to say toughen up princess when this was a full, lively game. The upset attitude of a handful of players paled in comparison to the other 20-30 that were online.  However, now when 3 or 4 people are upset, that's 30% of the playerbase entirely, and in a lot of cases, more like 80% of the playerbase in a given time zone.

[egreir]

My main active time period is a span of 8-14 hours depending if I stay at my office after hours, and I see on average probably 5 people online, the most I've ever seen was 12 or 13 for a couple hours.  This is an "off peak" time for me, and when I logged in there were 2 online.

So if my true average is closer to 7, and 3 of us are not happy with how the game operates, that's damn near 50%.  Toughen up princess doesn't work when you're talking to almost half the players.

[Celerity]

33 minutes ago, f0xx said:

So the suggestion is to lower the number of cabals?

I've missed the original suggestion.... but what cabals do you wish to "cut off"?

Don't you think this will greatly hurt the endgame and replayability FL has? 

Can you actually link me to the original suggestion?

 

There are different ways to do this. In both @Fool_Hardy's suggestion (top of this thread) and mine from 2009 is not to cut off any cabals at all. Fool_Hardy suggests keeping the same cabals and reorganizing them into three teams. Which is pretty much the same as mine:

Quote

 

The basic idea:

The idea is to merge the existing cabals into three cabals with a total of seven subcabals. These new cabals will have a mixture of traditional and new beliefs. The root concept is if you have 24 players, you shouldn't have 8 teams. Three teams will give everyone more to do. The breakdown is as this:

 

The key point, as Mya pointed out in this current thread:

On 4/13/2019 at 9:19 AM, mya said:

People being alone in cabals is detrimental to the game in my view. There is nothing like having cabal mates at the same time so make the game more enjoyable.

I do not think it will hurt replayability. In fact, I strongly believe it will improve measurably. First, any current RP/belief structure is possible under my reorganization, so it doesn't limit RP choices. Since the current subcabal variety is maintained (and Herald made useful), it would at least maintain PK variety. The new additions are important however:

1. Some subcabals that do not like each other in the same cabals, even across aligns. This is important as it creates a source of tension that cannot be resolved through PK. In other words, interaction, politics and all that RP stuff that cabals are supposed to offer, but have never really done well.

2. Fewer cabals means more people in each cabal, which means more people involved in general. Cabals aren't very fun as a series of solo players interacting with each other. This makes intracabal more interesting AND softens the PK volatility, as it is much more likely that you will have both cabal mates and enemies on. This improves RP/PK variety significantly. As I said in the original idea:

Quote

First, it will double the chances that one or more cabalmates will be online at the same time as you. It will also double the chances that your cabal enemies will be online.

Replayability is limited not by the choices you can make but by the interactions you can do. In this case, I try to maximize both. Players interacting with each other eases the promotion, burn out, and most other concerns repeatedly brought up in these threads WITHOUT messing with promotion times, structure, etc.

Almost everyone in this thread and the lore one are arguing for fewer cabals or promotion structure. Only Aeva mentioned less cabal player capacity in a one line post in the other thread.

[egreir]

Your original idea was from 2009 and we're still here talking about the same problem?  Well, there's the root of basically all the issues right there. No one wants to do shit. We're content to just sit back and watch while FL withers away to nothing instead of trying something, anything. No matter how drastic. Shake things up. You can't make things any worse than they are...and that's not a dig, it's just a cold hard fact that a lot of people seem to need to come to terms with. You could make cabal E free after 10 hours and I promise you those 2 people online earlier would still be online.......plus a few more lol

[Celerity]

I agree with the camp that says that cabal promotion speed has little impact on player numbers. The game is terribly inaccessible. Reorganizing the cabals will help a little with that, mostly in that you don't have to log off against too strong enemies (since you should have more variety of foes and friends to even it out). It will improve significantly interaction, but alone, It won't fix the problem.

To have a major impact in player numbers, you really need to improve the non-PK side of things. There must be something to do except PK and preparing for PK...and I don't mean freehand writing. This is very important for all level of players.

Ranking, questing and exploring are examples of these, but shouldn't be the only things. There have been dozens of suggestions to fill this midgame area. Something to keep you busy and having fun when PK is not viable or available. To be honest, interaction is the best. That is what keeps people online. We need to offer avenues of non-pk player-to-player interaction.

Players shouldn't want to idle. If you see idling players, you've messed up majorly in design. Mostly of those 'idle' players are not bothering to log on in the first place. This is the real loss of players.

Idling players are still better than no players. Players breed players, after all. So maybe encourage it if nothing else.

[egreir]

I think the bard weapon building system would be awesome if it was further refined and spread out to impact many other things. That kind of scavenger hunting would give us lots to do, create more conflict, etc.

 

 @Lloth touched on some cabal warfare modifications that also sounded extremely intriguing.

There was talk of new end game areas. New "hard more" instances of older end game areas. 

[Fool_Hardy]

3 hours ago, Celerity said:

To have a major impact in player numbers, you really need to improve the non-PK side of things. There must be something to do except PK and preparing for PK...and I don't mean freehand writing. This is very important for all level of players.

Perhaps adding a new level of automated quest lines. Currently its easy, go here and back, medium, visit here and then go there, or hard, go kill this mob. All of these provide an allotted amount of experience, coins, or Cabal Points.

What many are seeking now is better gear or RP points to improve their PK viability. Perhaps if there were a fourth choice available at level 50. Epic. An Epic quest would send the character on a scavenger hunt to visit many mobs in many areas, such as a continuous stream of medium quests that end with a hard quest. After slaying the end quest mob, characters would be required to deliver the mobs head to the final destination.

What would be the reward? Seems there could be any number of Ideas that aid the player. One that comes to mind is unique class specific high end armors. This would give players reason to repeat the epic quests. System checks at armor distribution phase to prevent player receiving more than one item per slot. Items should be no drop, no uncurse, rot death, and non rare.

Maybe even a large RP reward for completing a guild suit.

Just thinking out loud.

[egreir]

That’s a cool idea that could get fleshed out 

[Fool_Hardy]

Second thoughts. Perhaps the end quest grants the player a token. Example: Head Token, Arm Token, ect. The tokens could then be used to purchase the guild armor pieces from the bazaar. This would allow characters to store the tokens in a locker until they have enough tokens to build the suit. Of course, the undying high caliber players would likely just go get the pieces immediately. It would keep those who are weaker in the PK game from losing hours of work to a single assassination strike.

Also considered that Epic level quests could be applied in alternate areas, guilds for guild armor seekers, but perhaps stablemasters could offer one that allows characters to gain a semi permanent mount. After completing the stablemasters quest, purchased mounts become permanent until death. Maybe even allow certain shopkeepers to grant epic quests. What if a character could complete a quest for the herbalists and what ever herb said character gives them at its completion becomes purchasable by that character at that location. The same may apply to potions, scrolls, wands, and staves, provided they are not rare.

Again just thinking out loud.

[Kyzarius]

Or. Instead you know, of inventing something new. You just stop gate keeping the stuff there is harder than Cerberus. 

[Lloth]

Class set items are still something I want to do. They will involve quests for the harder difficulty versions of end game content. 

 

The cabal Warfare revamp idea I had needs a lot more work before I'm ready to fully present it.

[Fool_Hardy]

49 minutes ago, Kyzarius said:

Or. Instead you know, of inventing something new. You just stop gate keeping the stuff there is harder than Cerberus. 

As I respect your insight, would you mind elaborating when time permits?

Since I know my own playstyles, I know you are not accusing me of hording equipment or E/L slots.

 

[Wade]

Playing devil's advocate here. 

A basic game design principle is balancing around a certain point, for example WoW pvp is balanced with a 3v3 match in mind and also in full end game gear. Assuming the game is balanced around being trusted in a cabal at 50 then you have a minimum time frame you can play with. 

The time frame from induction to trusted is at a minimum around 30 hours, often more. 

The competition for 30 hours of playtime is quite large and diverse. You could finish most triple A games in that time which includes a fleshed out complete story. 

In my mind the solutions come in two flavours, either reduce the time so the alternative competition is reduced (for example a wait time of 15 hours total has less competition) or we make the 30 hours more engaging and entertaining. 

The easier solution is reducing the wait times however the more desirable solution is a more engaging and entertaining journey. 

How we accomplish that however is another question. 

[Fool_Hardy]

Continuing on the Epic quest line of thought. What if clanmaster epic quests resulted in hour reduction and/or autopromotion to T if requirements were met?