eugene
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Post by eugene on Apr 2, 2024 8:58:49 GMT -5
I'm sure this has already been proposed somewhere in this lengthy thread, but... what if the game is actually good? Like, will certain people even accept that? I wonder if Armageddon, as a brand, is salvageable.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 2, 2024 9:51:21 GMT -5
I'm sure this has already been proposed somewhere in this lengthy thread, but... what if the game is actually good? Like, will certain people even accept that? For what it's worth, I would totally accept it if it happened, just like I would accept a $1 billion lottery prize if I was entitled to one. It's unlikely, but people fail upward all of the time, and in theory the Armageddon staff are not exempt from this.
The standard for what a "good game" is is different for every person, though. In no particular order, I would say these are the biggest hurdles to Armageddon's success: 1) Armageddon is extremely disrespectful of its players' time. 2) One of the lead staff members, by his own admission, completely failed to notice that a staff member he was responsible for was stalking and sexually harassing players. This admission is understandable considering the only alternative was that he did notice and was okay with it, but then he proceeded to attack players who called him out on it.
3) The remaining players and staff are fundamentally okay with the above point, as the fact they remain with the game essentially constitutes comfort with Halaster leading the game despite his inattentiveness and poor behavior.
4) Its oldest players deliberately hold the game back from any semblance of progress so they can continue to hold advantages such as high karma and perceived better access to special apps/sponsored roles. 5) Obnoxious conflicts of interest. For example, the player moderation team's leader for a long time was Ath, a staff member. Similarly, the staff routinely seek to change game rules that make conflicts of interest more common, and can't actually be trusted to hold to their own rules in the long-term.
Does anyone here realistically see Armageddon actually addressing any of these points, let alone all of them?
Given the above? No. Armageddon's promotional posts on Reddit are essentially ignored at this point. The general attitude in the MUD community is that Armageddon is a dead game run and played by weird people that nobody likes. The only reason the MUD community wants Armageddon to stay open is so it can serve like a containment zone for toxic waste. The hope is that Armageddon players will stay on Armageddon as long as possible. RPIs that cater to Armageddon players, like Apocalypse and (the in-development game) Untold Dawn look essentially the same as the Armageddon community, with players in one game often being part of other RPI communities.
The people make the brand, and as long as they continue to fit the associations with that brand and present Armageddon-like behavior to other communities, it will never be salvaged. It's sort of like that old joke about how a guy laments that, despite building piers and bridges with his own two hands, he's not called "McGregor the bridge builder" or "McGregor the pier builder" because at some point in his life, he fucked one sheep. People will just know who the Armageddon players are as long as they continue to behave like Armageddon players.
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Post by najdorf on Apr 2, 2024 15:03:09 GMT -5
if armageddon was left open source to the community, it would. problem with armageddon is it's owners, who would bankrupt any enterprise. 9/10 their decisions are false. I do not blame their intentions. they are just incapable and dumb.
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Patuk
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Post by Patuk on Apr 2, 2024 16:00:26 GMT -5
If it's good, how would anyone know?
No, really, how would you tell? Are you gonna encounter some interesting person on every corner in thirty minutes of RP? Is neat shit going to drop in your lap left and right? Is all you work for gonna have a great payoff?
Really, what does it mean?
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Post by najdorf on Apr 2, 2024 16:07:29 GMT -5
If it's good, how would anyone know? No, really, how would you tell? Are you gonna encounter some interesting person on every corner in thirty minutes of RP? Is neat shit going to drop in your lap left and right? Is all you work for gonna have a great payoff? Really, what does it mean? There is an objective method to assess it. Method: Subjective assessment of a wise few people, including myself.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 2, 2024 18:33:26 GMT -5
I've seen the idea of open sourcing Arm get tossed around here a few times. We have a good preview of what open sourcing Arm's code looks like: Apocalypse. The staff are different people and the setting is reskinned. So what? You still have the same players behaving the same way. The same limited code base from the 1990s. The same fundamentally boring approach to magic, combat, and crafting. And if the setting and database comes with the source, then you have 30 years' worth of haphazardly-added content and documentation to either ditch and rebuild, or sift through and pick and choose what you want.
Open-sourcing Arm would just lead right back to Arm. The same at-best-mediocre, at-worst-toxic experience that Arm provides. Beyond addiction, sunk cost fallacy, and having fake internet power, what does Armageddon actually have to attract players? What does Armageddon actually bring to the table besides convincing MUD players to stay away from RPIs?
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Post by Azerbanjani on Apr 2, 2024 19:30:05 GMT -5
I mean, I like Apoc but I wouldn't call it 'Open source Arm'.
It's got a single guy who knows how to code.
Every choice he makes is generally on his own whims or because he saw an idea he liked.
I may be retarded but that doesn't scream open source to me. Then again I am retarded and don't know what we would expect out of 'open source arm'
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Post by jcarter on Apr 2, 2024 19:49:31 GMT -5
I'm sure this has already been proposed somewhere in this lengthy thread, but... what if the game is actually good? Like, will certain people even accept that? I wonder if Armageddon, as a brand, is salvageable. Good vs. bad is irrelevant imo, because even bad games will still attract players. I have a very different interest/taste than what I had when I played Arm, and things that the core players of Arm like I don't like. It's not a matter of good or bad, just different tastes. As a brand, it's just completely tainted. It'll never be able to shake off its legacy. At best, the old guard (Halaster et al.) will leave and some of the remnant pbase would be given the reins. For someone to take over the reins, they'd have to accept all the baggage that comes with it and I don't think any reasonable or well-suited person would accept that.
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nobody
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Post by nobody on Apr 3, 2024 0:56:57 GMT -5
gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60175.msg1102534.html#msg1102534 (bold for emphasis) This display of addictive thinking is why I assume Armageddon will have a fairly high player count on reopening. If there is one person who thinks this way in a group the size of Armageddon's community, there are undoubtedly others as well. And I think the creator of the term "CRACKAGEDDON" being at the helm of the seasons model knows fully well what he's actually doing with these people. I can't help but wonder what will happen to these people when Armageddon crashes and burns yet again, this time permanently. If the game crashes and burns yet again, I'll continue to hover about here like a pathetic loser, like so many others do I suppose... I'll let you know how things go.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 3, 2024 4:04:01 GMT -5
gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60175.msg1102534.html#msg1102534 (bold for emphasis) This display of addictive thinking is why I assume Armageddon will have a fairly high player count on reopening. If there is one person who thinks this way in a group the size of Armageddon's community, there are undoubtedly others as well. And I think the creator of the term "CRACKAGEDDON" being at the helm of the seasons model knows fully well what he's actually doing with these people. I can't help but wonder what will happen to these people when Armageddon crashes and burns yet again, this time permanently. If the game crashes and burns yet again, I'll continue to hover about here like a pathetic loser, like so many others do I suppose... I'll let you know how things go. If you stare at a computer screen feeling "lost" because a game run by abusers is dead, you aren't a "pathetic loser", nor is anyone here saying so except you. You just need to get therapy and social support.
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nobody
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Post by nobody on Apr 3, 2024 6:36:21 GMT -5
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 3, 2024 6:53:30 GMT -5
Here's a correction for you: I actually want Armageddon to survive, so that the human trash that use it as their personal playground for bullying and abusing people continue to be contained there. Until it dies I'll happily warn people not to join in and become a victim themselves. If you prefer to be a victim, that's your call, I suppose.
Both of our lives get worse when Armageddon dies, but the difference is I get mildly inconvenienced in my RP MUD of choice until the staff in charge ban some more people, and you stare at a blank terminal that keeps refusing your connection.
I sincerely hope for nothing but peace of mind for you.
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eugene
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Post by eugene on Apr 3, 2024 8:46:05 GMT -5
Beyond addiction, sunk cost fallacy, and having fake internet power, what does Armageddon actually have to attract players? What does Armageddon actually bring to the table besides convincing MUD players to stay away from RPIs? I never played Armageddon but my understanding is it brings a fairly unique and well-established canon of its own to play with. This sort of thing draws a player like me to a game. However, the playerbase is what always pushed me away - even during the mid-to-late 2000's when none of these controversies were widely known about. It always had a reputation for being brutal and unfriendly, and all the players I disliked on my RPIs were the ones playing Armageddon, so I stayed away.
So, theoretically, Armageddon could be salvaged.
When you're dealing with code that has been jury-rigged over 30 years, that is a different discussion entirely.
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Post by uncoolio on Apr 3, 2024 9:02:10 GMT -5
Armageddon has a special and somewhat unique type of gameplay. I've previously called it the Dark Souls of RPIs. Hell, maybe the Everquest of RPIs is more fitting. I don't know if any of you have played Everquest, but there's a reason that to this day, some 25 years after that game came out, there are still popular emulated servers and official classic servers. It's hard to put an exact sequence of words on what makes it satisfying, but I once heard someone call it "authentic crappiness." It's like rough living. It's like going camping and living off tinned beans. Why do people do that? To experience life without all the ease of modernity. To attempt to overcome a much worse version of what we're used to, in order to prove to ourselves that we can. You can't really get it anywhere else. Newer RPIs (and any other kinds of games especially) don't really seem to dare to present you with a gameworld where you can take three steps out of the gates and get lost in a sandstorm. They're careful not to fill their game with unfairly hostile and deadly things. They subject you to carefully curated difficulty curves, or content that is designed specifically to either be group-only and entirely inaccessible alone, or easy to solo for anybody. Armageddon lets you go into the Mantis Valley on your own. It's not wise, but if you're good at the game, you can manage. Armageddon is an RPI that you can be good or bad at. You can play Arm well, and find that it makes a difference. In other RPIs, I feel that they've softened that element. You can be a good roleplayer, and that's all well and good, but that tends to carry over seamlessly from one game to the other. When I play Arm (which has, admittedly, been a very sporadic and noncommittal thing in recent years because other factors made it a shit game), there's a sense of fulfillment from overcoming the tough obstacles and janky code. I don't really get that from any games except Arm, Dark Souls and Everquest. Arm was never built around any conventional principles of game design, and for that reason, it has a unique element of "fuck yes, I beat it!"
For the same reason, I earnestly hope that Season 1 is a success. I just can't claim that I have lots of confidence ahead of time.
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eugene
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Post by eugene on Apr 3, 2024 9:33:54 GMT -5
I would say that makes Armageddon unique and palatable from a design perspective. Lots of people enjoy games that are intentionally difficult, but beatable. Too many games these days substitute difficulty with RnG, or make the game too easy, or their idea of making the game harder is just lowering your health and damage while increasing the health and damage of the enemies with no other substantive change.
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