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Post by ocotilloskewers on Mar 25, 2023 19:03:42 GMT -5
I don't know anything about whatever Haldol talked about, but yeah, right or wrong, terrible idea to point fingers during the current situation.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,337
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 25, 2023 19:07:15 GMT -5
I read this post a second time and something just feels really skeevy to me about Haldol's unwanted fawning over a player and their character based off of having dinner with them once a decade ago. It reminds me of Shalooonsh naming the hospital in Tuluk "Tallis's Respite" even though Tallis was a bard, not a healer, years after Tallis's player quit the game. Just a complete lack of knowledge of the character and respect for their legacy. Staff love the appearance of honoring players' contributions to the game, because it dangles the promise of being remembered in front of other players looking to leave their mark on Zalanthas's history. But staff don't actually know how to pay homage without looking like massive dorks at best and complete creeps at worst. The fact that certain former staff have had a reputation of stalking players and other former staff certainly doesn't help this effort.
It's like staff have three modes: - Doing this stupid bullshit of pretending to care about a player's contribution. - Not pretending to care at all. - Sending envelopes filled with white powder to Nergal's house, by putting them in a mailbox down the street from Bebop's house.
You would think with 20 staff members on the team, one of them would have some experience with socializing with others.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Mar 25, 2023 20:20:09 GMT -5
To be totally fair it's more like he was trying to say "I like them they're cool peeps" for street cred, the rest was him hanging on to his memories of playing his mul PC and deciding that his love for Hasan (note: clearly did not translate to UNDERSTANDING Hasan) meant it was a-ok to break out the cube despite Hasan purposefully having everything destroyed by Tektolnes' fire, including said cube, and the staff echoes of nothing remaining but fine ash.
Then he thought it was a-ok to "impersonate" Hasan or whatever the actual purpose was, despite the timing being really sus after Ender and I legit got force-stored out of our roles last year, the issues being multi-faceted but ultimately boiling down to 'Shalooonsh is a gaslighting creep' -- the same Shalooonsh whose "resource character" Haldol was helping become a sorcerer.
Either completely tone-deaf or sus as fuck, and I'm going to conclude stupidity instead of malice so I don't get (too) spicy again.
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Post by dumpsterfirediva on Mar 25, 2023 21:31:21 GMT -5
To be totally fair it's more like he was trying to say "I like them they're cool peeps" for street cred, the rest was him hanging on to his memories of playing his mul PC and deciding that his love for Hasan (note: clearly did not translate to UNDERSTANDING Hasan) meant it was a-ok to break out the cube despite Hasan purposefully having everything destroyed by Tektolnes' fire, including said cube, and the staff echoes of nothing remaining but fine ash. Then he thought it was a-ok to "impersonate" Hasan or whatever the actual purpose was, despite the timing being really sus after Ender and I legit got force-stored out of our roles last year, the issues being multi-faceted but ultimately boiling down to 'Shalooonsh is a gaslighting creep' -- the same Shalooonsh whose "resource character" Haldol was helping become a sorcerer. Either completely tone-deaf or sus as fuck, and I'm going to conclude stupidity instead of malice so I don't get (too) spicy again. I notice the deafening radio silence to the question of the ask of 'which noble pc' had the item.
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 54
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Post by baron on Mar 25, 2023 21:42:29 GMT -5
You know. I was a minor party to that whole plot line with Lady Death and Ender's neutral good --> chaotic evil sorc.
I hate that plotline so goddamn much. It was everything wrong with Armageddon.
1: Only the cool kids club know what happened. After all these years, I still have only a basic idea. Just like the ten or so OOC staff pets are allowed to know.
2: While in the midst of things, I could see the OOC battlelines. It was starkly obvious that everyone was talking to everyone else outside of the game, staff and players. Hordes of people would just mysteriously log whenever something interesting happened, for example. I feel like I was the only one involved who wasn't in the OOC loop.
3: I was playing my first magicker. After playing the game for more than ten years, that was the first one. I had to beg and special app for it. Meanwhile all these people who were obviously and blatantly breaking the Find Out IC rule that I was naïve enough to follow were running around with nobles, nilizi, and multiple sorcs. Probably a psion or five in there I didn't know about. It felt fundamentally unfair.
There was a point in the plotline where staff came down hard and let Ender know elementalists weren't cool enough to play with the nilizi and sorc. Lame as fuck.
4: Playing that first magicker didn't feel special in the least, because it very much felt like everyone else in the game had magic superpowers or friends with magic superpowers. My little Rukkian was just as powerless and impotent in the grand scheme of things as a Byn runner compared to all the fantastical epic-level magical bullshit flying around. It put me on armabreak for about a year afterwards, and because it all felt so terribly, terribly lame.
Let me clear about this. There were players like Bebop, who were almost always cool and very inclusive with their plotlines. I appreciate the hell out of it. Players like them made the game fun.
But most of the staff pet crew who are now feuding with their former staff patrons...from my experiences, from my vantage point, you lot were determinantal to my fun and I think the overall character of the game. You were mini-staff, power-tripping and forming personality cults in your own ways.
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baobob
Clueless newb
Posts: 100
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Post by baobob on Mar 25, 2023 21:53:50 GMT -5
... There were players like Bebop... Players like them made the game fun. But most of the staff pet crew who are now feuding with their former staff patrons...from my experiences, from my vantage point, you lot were determinantal to my fun and I think the overall character of the game. You were mini-staff, power-tripping and forming personality cults in your own ways. Who are "you lot"? LauraMars? Ender? Delerak? Not sure who these power-tripping taint sniffers are, but I'd love to hate on them too if you'll point 'em out.
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 54
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Post by baron on Mar 25, 2023 21:57:35 GMT -5
I don't have extensive OOC knowledge of who played what. But I knew which characters in game were staff-pets being given all the goodies. (and of course, few of them were probably staff themselves).
If Ender played the sorc who had that whole coven with the Nilizi I only know as Lady Death, who went from being a nice guy preserver to a corrupted villainous character, then he certainly falls into the staff-pet category, and one of the people I highly suspect of being involved in an extensive OOC information network. All while parroting the find out ic line to the plebs like me.
Not to mention, anyone who ever played an eternally invisible floating sorc probably had to, to avoid getting ganked. But it was still lame. Lame. Lame. Lame.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Mar 25, 2023 22:18:21 GMT -5
Seriously, Ender isn't that kind of player. In fact he got shit on a lot by staff (yes, even the "cool stuff" was more like "we torture you for a literal 6 hour scene and then GOTCHA you get something completely different than what you wanted", which he just rolled with because that's what he did). He fought for everything he had. He was just good at being inclusive and having things happening or creating things to happen for the minions. I'm sure staff would love to absolve themselves of blame while pointing fingers at players for the things that THEY DID to players. Friendly tip: don't fall for the bait. Or if you're just trolling, GTFO.
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 54
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Post by baron on Mar 25, 2023 22:36:47 GMT -5
I don't have an extensive index where I can match RL players to staff-pet PCs. I don't know if you participated in the Nilizi corrupts sorc storyline in question. But I know you know every detail of what happened.
I'm sure in Ender's mind he was trying to be inclusive with his **minions**. But:
>we torture you for a literal 6 hour scene and then GOTCHA you get something completely different than what you wanted
A player gets a staff interaction for six hours is how I read that.
Ender, whether it was through his own personal RP skill or his OOC connections, got to play with toys that most players couldn't hope for. He was a player character. The great unwashed masses were NPCs in his story, his devoted sad little minions begging for scraps at his anointed feet, rather than his fellow players participating in telling a story.
Now it's apparent that you were all NPCs in staff's sick/cruel story, instead. If their activities weren't so morally repugnant, I'd say that was funny.
I take solace in the fact that ultimately all those cool kid stories that some of us weren't awesome enough to know about will be forgotten, wiped from the internet's consciousness when Armageddon finally goes down. Digital dust. It all ultimately meant nothing. Not even the AIs will remember any of it.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Mar 25, 2023 22:48:18 GMT -5
Wow. Your ass is bitter. That's okay, we were bitter too. We were just bitter in a more logical direction.
You're right, though. It's all meaningless. It's digital dust. So why lash out and trash talk someone who did their best to be inclusive and fun? Why accuse them of being a staff pet blah blah blah blah? I know the details because I'm his actual wife and we started dating a few years after all this went down, and it was a natural topic of conversation to talk about old PCs, like Elithan and Hasan. Geez dude.
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 54
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Post by baron on Mar 25, 2023 23:49:30 GMT -5
We were just bitter in a more logical direction. You really don't see the irony there. I don't know any of you people IRL, and god willing, I never will. Maybe Ender is the greatest guy ever. Maybe his intentions were always good. I have no way of knowing. All I can see from my vantage point is collections of staff-pet PCs over the years making the game significantly less fun for me. That terrible sorc storyline was the scaffolding I needed to climb to see that "Find Out IC" and favoritism were problems. Henceforth, I would read jcarter's spoilers and take full advantage of meta knowledge. Henceforth, I would try to find little corners not infected by sorcs and psions, since they tended to be the most egregiously advantaged players. There were staff-pets. Ender was one of them. There were people communicating extensively OOCly while telling the rest of us to find out IC. Ender was in that crowd. There were people who got to play with the cool toys, and people who who did not. I did not. Maybe it's because I suck. Probably it's because I suck. It's still a shit way to run a roleplaying game. It engenders a disparity between *players* rather than a disparity between their characters. And ultimately y'all got burned by the disparity of power between players and staff. The disparity of agency between players and players was also a bad thing, for similar reasons.
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jesantu
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 339
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Post by jesantu on Mar 26, 2023 2:14:41 GMT -5
Sorry but I just don't think the "Ender and his wife" line was somehow this evil misogynistic line that it's painted out to be. Did he say it multiple times throughout the text? I think it was just once. Repeatedly and it would have stood out. Once and it's really nothing. I think youre grasping at straws here. He could've said Delerium and her husband and it would've been just as benign.
What strikes me more is where he said: "However, Ender's sorcerer was eventually captured and executed in Allanak (not stored) at least that's what the character log tells me today." The addition of "that's what the log says at least" makes me question his intentions. If Hasan was executed in public I would've said "Hasan was executed in public". Period. It wouldn't even enter my mind to add "well, I mean, thats what the log says but who knows!" But even then, like saying "Ender and his wife", it might be nothing.
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mehtastic
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Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,337
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 26, 2023 5:15:35 GMT -5
"Ender and his wife" is at best, an old-fashioned way of referring to a couple. It's a bit of a weird thing to say when you know Ender's wife's name though. Not as weird and misogynistic as saying "men and females" in casual conversation (wday moment) or other obvious tells like that. It's just slightly weird. My point in bringing up that line is not that Haldol is an evil misogynist, it's that he's not aware of how he comes off to others. The entire post shows how utterly awkward Haldol is as a person. And this is someone who is potentially next in line to be Producer, assuming the game lives long enough for that. So, this post is as worthy of scrutiny as anything else staff says.
As for the staff-pet sidebar, I think it's nonsensical and irrelevant to the topic at hand. Haldol just made a post stating, essentially: "I ended a plot because a player leaked OOC information and I just wasn't feeling it anymore." Staff put their trust in an untrustworthy player recently, and then instead of trying to repair their own error, wiped all evidence of it instead. They consider the player's knowledge that they ruined a plot its own punishment, as if that absolves staff of their role in trusting shitty players in the first place. Then on Discord, legends like Hestia and multiple prominent players proceeded to insinuate it wouldn't have been a problem had Ender not complained about it. Staff-pet or not, Ender has been thrown under the bus long ago. If you don't see that, you're not paying attention.
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migrant
staff puppet account
Posts: 22
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Post by migrant on Mar 26, 2023 9:51:46 GMT -5
As a relative newb who played with Ender's latest character, and did not even have any idea who played that character until later, I can definitely vouch for two things:
1. Ender's character was insanely inclusive, and it was their inclusivity that made me actually not quit the game at a point where I'd felt like quitting. I was completely blindsided and overwhelmed by how much this character suddenly shared, how much story and purpose they offered, and how there were absolutely no strings attached to it -- neither plot-wise, nor any other kind of pressure.
2. I was struck by how fragile the existence of Ender's character was, and how much odds they were against pretty much daily in order to continue. I saw no favoritism at all; in fact, I saw the opposite of it -- in the barely two months that I played there, the ongoing pressure of the world and staff against this character stood out to me starkly. Part of what started to depress me about the game was actually that I realized nothing of any plot magnitude would ever be able to come about in the world of Zalanthas, despite witnessing this character's colossal efforts. There were moments I sincerely felt that both other players and staff were metagaming and "out to get" this character. Maybe that was mostly Shaloonsh or other bad actors, but still. At first, I had thought Ender's character might actually have been a staff avatar who knew I was feeling down about the game and was trying to give me a boost. But I swiftly discounted this possibility as time went on -- precisely because I saw that this character did not have any privilege.
So... while I think that "staff pets" most certainly exist in games, there's often a tendency by players to see some other players "getting cool things" and just assuming that those players are "staff pets". Sometimes this is true, but it is usually only true when you see a discrepency between effort and outcomes. For example: Rika getting the Savvy Spiders to become a mini-house, while Virshal's similar efforts with Eastrook rendered no such progress. It's a bad idea to just say that other players are staff pets because they're enjoying a cool story. More often than not, the cool story is due to the efforts of the players. And more often than not in any case where cool story is due to the efforts of players, especially where bad staff are involved, this cool story is *IN SPITE* of staff rather than because of any staff pet situation. Corrupt staff build resentment against the players who are putting in effort to make their own cool stories, because any railroading intentions or attempts at giving themselves or their pets things tend to get waylaid by the genuine players' efforts. And that's literally what you see in front of you with Ender and Delirium.
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spyguy
staff puppet account
Posts: 14
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Post by spyguy on Mar 26, 2023 10:12:46 GMT -5
Delirium and Ender are both amazing players in my experience. One thing each could do was live a long time playing the same PC, through surviving the training phase to those long stretches of boredom as your best buds just disappeared. Staff rarely give much attention to short lived PCs and even long lived ones might have to go out of their way to insert themselves into a plot. Did staff pay attention to Ender more? Probably. Because in this case he was playing a sorcerer and it sounds like he had also gathered PCs around him. They both have that knack, engaging other players in RP and giving them the tools to get more into character. Sleep was a god damn therapist for my mul, went out of his way to get kanjel to paint a picture of my former bondmate I had described. Dude deserves all the credit, and he did it for ages as other PCs came and went. Arm doesn't respect your time in general but in this case staff didn't respect the players' contributions to the game.
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