[CF-Devel] Okay here goes... my thoughts
Andreas Vogl
andi.vogl at gmx.net
Sat Oct 7 15:59:08 CDT 2000
in reply to darth_bob´s mail:
First of all: Hi darth_bob, old friend! Since I played with you
on the voldsbooks server a lot (->"red_blaze"), I feel an
unresistable urge to reply to your nice mail :-)
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Okay, this might turn out to be alittle long... sorry.
The reply won´t get any shorter, be prepared... ;-)
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Gods
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Firstly, diseases, I have never actually managed to get one [...]
Disease spells come mainly with sorig. You need good stats (best at 30)
and about level > 20, then you´ll get the spells very fast.
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Retributive strike.... WOW! that spell is, sorry to say it, rubbish.
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[...]
Retributive strike is a little bit like diseases: It can kill anything,
but the danger is not to get killed by yourself. We are trying our best
to balance these spells... I admit, lag is a problem that is hard to
deal with in this context.
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Mostrai... I pretty much no negative god (except maybe the slaying =).
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[...] The holy posession is abit stupid too (I have used it once),
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perhaps it can work by +ing to your current stats... ie if you have an
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ac of -20 it will +5 ie. -25 instead of not doing anything unless you
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have a mega high level?
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I feel Sorig is well balanced, although i haven't really played around
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with plague so i am ignorant there. Perhaps the suggestiong of instead of
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plagues giving elec spells? (hint: CHAIN LIGHTNING /hint)
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Most of the other gods are abit tame for my tastes, Ruggillis avatar
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rawks.. but no armour really means only my dragon has any use for it at
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all.
Balancing the religions is hard, developers have been trying their best.
Moreover, many people have different tastes... It´s always good to
hear new opinions and suggestions on that topic.
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lastly, cult monsters are abit of a stange thing.. devourers gets all
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these, while mostrai gets the crappy things i ever did see.. even the arch
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warrior of mostria is gay. They creatures have about as much brains as a
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pack of tuna and the damn vampires reak HAVOK if they get into you
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apartment.. I tell you what.. the first (and last time) I let them in..
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one read a scroll of fireball I had in there... Kaabooom there goes all my
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cloaks, scrolls, books and POTIONS. Perhaps a cult/pet free zone could be
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made in the apartment? wouldn't have a clue how though.. perhaps a new
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attribute to an area? (like no magic zones)
Haha hehe, sorry but it´s so funny :-))
I agree, something should be done to prevent pets from entering an
appartment. Problem: I can´t think of a good and easy way to realize that.
Perhaps someone else got ideas?
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Characters.
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Well my only few gripes are, Quetzecoatls get REALLY jibbed at high
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levels. I got to level 110 by killing the balrogs in Mwizard and using the
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lavaslasher which I did actually manage to find on my own with abit of
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help from a certain someone.
Could that certain someone be me, by chance? =))
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But i feel there really needs to be some
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evening up there, there are some quests which Qs just can't do without a
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few million potions and alot of knowledge about what is coming (volcano).
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Perhaps it would be fair to allow girdles, bracers, maybe cloaks to be
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worn?
Yes, you are so right on this one! I, as well, plead for making at
least girdles and bracers useable for "no_armour"-classes. (Maybe
this isn´t all that logic. But then where did fireborns put their rings
so far?) I think there should also be much more armour & ac - bonus per
level.
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ps. the image for the Q is abit stuffed, it always wants to point to
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the left making it very slow to move without actually running, you press
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move it turns steps then turns around again (lag hurts for this alot).
True! This applies to the half-orc as well. Seems to be some animation-bug.
Should be fixed, it´s *very* annoying.
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I feel the half orc gets alittle over balanced with the prot poison. later
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on most if not all characters will not be worried about poison so taking
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so many points of stats is alittle unfair.
Characters > level 90 are automatically immune to poison (and all other
"special" attacktypes). I´ve already proposed to change this recently.
I think it will be done sooner or later.
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Wraith is neat, perhaps immune to disease would be nice in there?
Already done. Peter M. and me were considering to restrict the wraith
from certain religions. So that wraiths cannot exploit sorigs
disease-spells with their immunity.
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now for my BIG point (which I am very willing to have a shot at
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implementing), protection/immunity.
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I admit I know where the WDSM is and i did have help in finding it and i
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think it would be easy to balance it out, just remove immune cold from
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there (leave prot cold).
Already done - by me (didn´t leave prot. cold though) :-)
I´ve changed the whole huge pupland quest, made the WDSM much much harder
to get. It´s nice now, I hope you like it...
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I think without that the game is alittle silly,
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no matter how much protection from something, it is always just protection
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half damage. that is CRAZY! surely there is absolutely no reason no to at
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least make them multiplicative. DRAGONS (red) are stupid and so are all
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the big demons, without 5 million potions and no lag they are doom past
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level 50. I can't do a thing without the armour. I walk into a room, if
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there is a dragon I am dead, fairly simple. With this multiplicative
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protection maybe some of those special weapons may become used again? I
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think I would rather have the extra resistances with the sword than have a
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few extra stat points.
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This, I feel wouldn't be a massive change, but a very fair one. it would
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reduce the gap that appears after someone gets WDSM, and allow those of us
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with lag to at least be able to run.
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perhaps.. perhaps even a new improvement? resistance? x 1/4 something
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better than pro but no immunity.
I spent a lot of time thinking about that issue before. I´ve proposed the
same idea (stacking protection scheme) to the list not long ago.
It turned out that the majority of developers didn´t like it too much.
The problem is that in fact it IS a massive change. Many quests/items would
get out of balance. Worst case: Perhaps the whole mapset would need to be
redone... Think about it - Every monster would get a new damage rating...
So what I decided to do is balancing immunities by their quests.
I think wdsm and magic cloak are as hard to get now as they should be.
At least, I did my best :-P
Introduction of a new protection between 100% and 50% (like 75%?)
still sounds like a rather good idea to me though.
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Weapons.
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Obviously the sword should be godarised after it has the damage types not
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the slaying, this I feel would allow the devourers abit more chance in the
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pantheon and stop those
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(weaponmagic)(elec)(fire)(death)(depletion)(drain)'s from popping up?
Yes, and it will most likely be done soon. Too many people have been
complaining about that lately...
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ps. could someone tell me, if you get slaying then those damages only
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attack the creature that is slayer correct? ie if the aforementioned
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additions to a weapon were added onto a mostri sword, then only goblin
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and giant would be attack with them? Is this also true for weapons that
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already have slaying? (I thought the Kobold dagger would REALLY rawk until
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i remembered that might be the case)
Generally - Nope. Slaying means nothing more than if you attack a creature
that is "slayn", you do tripple damage. Different attacktypes mean that
the best one will be "picked out" for the attack, considering the enemies
vulnerabilities. If you have both, you take advantage of both.
However, death attack is an exception here: Death attack strikes all
enemies if no slaying, and only the "slayn foes" otherwise.
Another exception are special attacktype like poison and paralyze:
As far as I know, they will always do their job - no matter what.
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My first idea [...] was to add mostrai to a dagger of paralysis.
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I prepared it and used a few potions (alot actually) then went and
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started praying.. silly me. I think this weapon is considered the same
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as a dagger of sorig? correct? so you can't add your god to it? [...]
A rule of thumb: If the weapon´s title includes an "of", it cannot be
blessed by gods anymore.
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Again, with multiplicative protection, prepared weapons wouldn't be as
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powerful.... *grin*
Only after you´ve changed all of the monster´s archetypes... *grin*
(I´m not against a partial protection scheme, but it really is a major
change. Most, maybe all developers should agree to it, no chance otherwise)
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Armour.
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A too heavily counted on item I think. Dragons and fireborn get completely
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jibbed, no armour and crappy stats. The only way to get immunity to fire
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is through armour which is also silly.
Once I suggested to allow race-specific items or quests. We could insert
amulets/rings with powerful immunities, and restrict their usage for all
races except quetzal/fireborn then. Wouldn´t be hard to code, but it
lacks common agreement so far :-P
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Enchant armour scrolls make the
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stuff god like, ac - 57 and arm of 99... nothing touches you except
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lightning the major magic and disease. [...]
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I am thinking of designing abit more map... perhaps including some nice
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armour... much like the great winter mail but for fire.. I thought perhaps
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with enough minus.. even immunity to fire could be balanced abit =)
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(thinks.. okay vun: magic vun: physi -5 pow -5 magic =))
As designer of the new pupland quest, I think WDSM is *perfectly* balanced
now. A second armour with fire-immu can make things only worse again...
And it would make whole pupland kinda obsolete. I suggest that you
insert something new, like immu elec/cold/poison... anything :-)
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Enemies/creatures
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I love fighting everying in Crossfire and it is hard to grow tired.. even
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after getting to the stage where Balrogs and Greater demons are just cool
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to look at... It really bugs me about how demonlords though, for example
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can fire lightning out there shoes (crazy shoes). It kinda removes abit of
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the strat from an attack.. perhaps smacking a demonlords feet might be its
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weakness for example? This to me sounds like real strategy.
There are many interesting ways to create monsters with certain strategies
for killing them. Take a look at the new pupland stuff...
However, providing more strategy can hardly ever be a mistake. If you find
someone to code it (perhaps even yourself?), you might have a good chance
to get that into CVS.
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All the big fire things IMHO are overpowered, sure a chinese dragon
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hurts.. but at least you can fry them, dragons are strong enough that you
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cant attack them in time, and baby dragons.. those things are worse than
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dragons... immune fire and resistant to both magic and ice??? they die
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after all the dragons... what is going on there...
Never thought about that before... But I think baby dragons are
much easier to kill physically, if you drink a fire potion.
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which reminds me.. another question, if a creature is big does it take
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damage from every square? ie wizards get a total 9x the damage from a holy
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word than a goblin or demilich would? cause I think it sucks how the big
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things all die first, and the little toots survive. perhaps / the damage
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taken by the number of sqaures the creature is? that would make wizards
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for example.. slightly dangerous even to mostrai users =) of course that
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would me if you don't completely hit something it wont take nearly as much
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damage... but think of that as STRATEGY =)
That sounds like a good idea. I like it.
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final notes.
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I have been reading through the arguements in this mailing list about
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balance.. I feel alot of it is rubbish.. [...]
Hey, hey - It´s just different oppinions, not rubbish :-)
Balance is such a vague word... and it can be incredible hard to realize
it sometimes. You´re welcomed to throw in all of your ideas to make
things better. We all want to have crossfire *perfectly balanced*.
We´re trying to do our best...
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I feel there is a real lack of mid danger creatures... wyverms and nice..
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they are abit of a challenge for along long while... I think more
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creatures like that should be added.. not more demi-super-killer-nasties..
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perhaps I should focus my map making attention on the low 20s to 50s
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level? make something similar to mwizard for those levels.. (ie not so
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nasty.. but similar kind of skills and similar kind of prob solving)
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Newbies come in.. they have a GREAT time killing orcs etc.. get up to
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ogres (which is a big step) then that is it... hill giants are alittle to
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nasty, skeletons are pretty nasty but quite rare/hidden from most newbie
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areas. So there is nothing... the only way to get past here is often to
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lend some weapons.. of give a LARGE number of hints out which may spoil
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the game for some.
Yes there´s a lack of real good maps/monsters for medium level players.
Maybe the reason is that many people (oh, oh - including myself?) have
more fun at creating super-nasty-dirty-insane-monsters than medium ones.
Creating some good beginner/medium maps would be a blessing.
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Since I am still praying to devourers to give plague.. (hoping they dang
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well will.. [...]
Devourers don´t grant any diseases yet. No doubt, devourers need a
reasonable spell to advance in levels. But that doesn´t necessarily
need to be a disease (-> undead = immune to disease => danger of abuse).
What about "cause many wounds" or "retributive strike" (oops, you didn´t
like that one)?
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Partying up is good fun.. perhaps making sure that how ever something is
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killed.. that area of skill is shared and that only.. (so that you can't
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just party up and let one char sit there and build wis while the other is
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phys attacking etc..(even though this is still quite slow)).
I think everybody agrees that must be done. But nobody has coded it
yet. Neverthless, it will happen sometime, most likely.
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Perhaps abit more levels where partying would be good? ie. giving the
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warriors areas where magic isn't as powerful. maybe... and this might be
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abit contraversial... having no friendly fire? ohh hooo.. =)
Yes, that would be nice. Too bad there aren´t enough people playing CF
to fill up all of the online-servers. Another problem is the incompatibility
of players with different levels. I still believe that CF-servers will
all be crowded some day. It´s a great game after all.
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anyway.. I can't be bothered thinking of anything else to say right now,
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so I wont. But I would like to congrat the whole team, from beginning to
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end for making a fine game with some BRILLIANT ideas.. [...]
Yeah, true spoken. Too bad I´m not long enough among the CF-developers
yet to feel these compliments would refer to me in any way. :-)
Andreas Vogl, alias "red_blaze the gargoyle"
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