jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,030
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Post by jkarr on Dec 9, 2023 10:23:53 GMT -5
yup and this is exactly what happens when u dont apply the rules of consent to shit that actually counts nice job morons
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,329
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 9, 2023 10:44:21 GMT -5
Usiku's adept enough at dodging questions to pull one over on the players, but this is just a non-answer. It allows for the reality that the producers and admins made the decision privately, then told the rest of the staff that the decision was made just before announcing it to the wider playerbase. Echoes of the Tuluk closure situation, really.
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Post by jcarter on Dec 9, 2023 13:24:32 GMT -5
It's so weird how staff, despite going over many iterations of personnel, are just so opposed to actually having a frank and open discussion. People wouldn't have to speculate and rumors wouldn't spread if things were addressed in a straightforward manner and underlying questions (e.g. what was the timeline of things being announced) instead of vaguely dancing around the issue.
The thinking is completely backwards. Staff assess that the game is circling the game and losing players, so they create a widely unpopular decision without checking the reception of the currently existing playerbase. When the playerbase provides logical criticism and doesn't like the changes, they're told too bad -- you don't have a say.
I don't understand why staff is operating the game at this point. It reminds me of a situation I was in, where myself and a few others volunteered for something that received no extra pay, no credit towards career advancement, and working extra hours during off times. One of the people on it would bitch about anything and everything under the sun on a constant, regular basis including the work itself which always begged the question of '...why are you even here?'
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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Dec 9, 2023 13:37:26 GMT -5
watching the evolution of armageddon over the past few years has really been kind of a masterclass in the importance of community building and respecting players if you want your game to thrive
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Post by kiyetdreams on Dec 9, 2023 13:58:53 GMT -5
Not even their 'Senior Storyteller' was told. From what was said on Discord, Halaster has pretty much said 'my game, I will do what I want with it'. Every time anyone says anything about why didn't you ask the player base? There is always some kind of fancy way of them wording it to make it sound like you are the problem, not them. The promotion in question happened the day before the announcement.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,329
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 9, 2023 14:03:52 GMT -5
Interesting. I had been told that she was told a day or so before the announcement, with more heads-up than any of the other STs. So she gave a promotion to a PC on the same day? That's very unlucky timing. If only the producers were willing to communicate with their own team, they would have saved the playerbase a lot of headache and heartache.
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Post by jcarter on Dec 9, 2023 14:10:06 GMT -5
watching the evolution of armageddon over the past few years has really been kind of a masterclass in the importance of community building and respecting players if you want your game to thrive It hasn't actually been an evolution tbh, it's always been this way. Karma overhauls, class splits, closure of Tuluk, Arm 2.0, etc. The difference is that it's not the '90s anymore. The days of willingly bending over for the dickhead graybeard dungeon master are over. Staff have never thought of themselves or their culture as the issue and it's plainly obvious, they direct their angst towards the playerbase. So many things could've been solved or sidestepped if they actually acted like adults instead of having an us vs. them mentality. But they don't, and let's be realistic, the late Gen X/boomers running things aren't going to have a sudden epiphany that sparks a new sense of self-awareness.
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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Dec 9, 2023 14:24:58 GMT -5
watching the evolution of armageddon over the past few years has really been kind of a masterclass in the importance of community building and respecting players if you want your game to thrive It hasn't actually been an evolution tbh, it's always been this way. Karma overhauls, class splits, closure of Tuluk, Arm 2.0, etc. The difference is that it's not the '90s anymore. The days of willingly bending over for the dickhead graybeard dungeon master are over. Staff have never thought of themselves or their culture as the issue and it's plainly obvious, they direct their angst towards the playerbase. So many things could've been solved or sidestepped if they actually acted like adults instead of having an us vs. them mentality. But they don't, and let's be realistic, the late Gen X/boomers running things aren't going to have a sudden epiphany that sparks a new sense of self-awareness. could've phrased that better more like "watching in real time what happens when community building gets silly and done wrong", i guess you know what i mean
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Post by uncoolio on Dec 9, 2023 14:47:55 GMT -5
I think staff should be allowed to do what they want if they tend to do the right thing. If they had a good track record with their overhauls and restructurings, they should use their own judgment instead of deferring to the largely irrational knee-jerk stupidity of the playerbase. It's just that their track record has been awful, so it's difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt. In a perfect world where they usually get it right, they shouldn't have to get permission from the players before making plans. The GDB crowd is full of fucking idiots, and very nearly all things that ever get suggested are shot down because the community's first reaction to change of any kind is always "no thanks." Arm is a game that has been run into the ground through generations of poor decisions from staff and their inability/unwillingness to keep things interesting. When the two words that best describe Arm in the last decade are 'boring' and 'inert,' there should have been more enthusiasm for a change that at least purports to address this problem directly. However, a combination of staff's questionable track record and the playerbase's lack of balls means everyone has already decided that this project is doomed to fail. For that reason, it probably will. Even if staff had started out inspired and eager to get to work, seeing the community's reaction must have destroyed any trace of enthusiasm they had.
What the hell was the alternative, though? Keep things the way they are? Anyone who isn't stupid can see that the game is fucked, and has been for years. Then we can sit here and say that staff ought to do more to run metaplots and facilitate player ambitions, but the fact of the matter is that they haven't. Maybe they don't have the manpower. Maybe they've grown complacement. Maybe they're bored of overseeing a game that is played the exact same way today as it was at the turn of the millennium. Whatever the case, the hard reality is that the current version of the game has been going the way of Blockbuster and Sears for quite a while. Maybe staff should have done X, Y and Z, but they haven't, whatever the reason may be. If they weren't gonna do it, it serves no purpose to say they should have done it. It's just a waste of breath. We know by now that they weren't gonna do it. Who can look at Arm as it is now, and has been for years, and say they want more of that? Someone without balls, that's who. This game has sucked ass for a very long time, and while there may have been ways to change that fact without such drastic measures as this new project, the undeniable fact is that nobody has done whatever it might have taken to fix it. It's like wishing the weather would get milder, then throwing a fit when someone brings up climate change. There was nothing left of any value in the game, so why fight to keep it this way? It's hard to understand.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Dec 9, 2023 16:47:48 GMT -5
The merits or lack thereof of the actual idea aside, the whole situation highlights two things with painful clarity:
1) The disrespect across the staff/player divide 2) The abysmal communication skills
Those problems are a tale as old as ArmageddonMUD, if you think about it, so... here we are.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Dec 9, 2023 16:59:48 GMT -5
I think staff should be allowed to do what they want if they tend to do the right thing. If they had a good track record with their overhauls and restructurings, they should use their own judgment instead of deferring to the largely irrational knee-jerk stupidity of the playerbase. It's just that their track record has been awful, so it's difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt. In a perfect world where they usually get it right, they shouldn't have to get permission from the players before making plans. The GDB crowd is full of fucking idiots, and very nearly all things that ever get suggested are shot down because the community's first reaction to change of any kind is always "no thanks." Arm is a game that has been run into the ground through generations of poor decisions from staff and their inability/unwillingness to keep things interesting. When the two words that best describe Arm in the last decade are 'boring' and 'inert,' there should have been more enthusiasm for a change that at least purports to address this problem directly. However, a combination of staff's questionable track record and the playerbase's lack of balls means everyone has already decided that this project is doomed to fail. For that reason, it probably will. Even if staff had started out inspired and eager to get to work, seeing the community's reaction must have destroyed any trace of enthusiasm they had.
What the hell was the alternative, though? Keep things the way they are? Anyone who isn't stupid can see that the game is fucked, and has been for years. Then we can sit here and say that staff ought to do more to run metaplots and facilitate player ambitions, but the fact of the matter is that they haven't. Maybe they don't have the manpower. Maybe they've grown complacement. Maybe they're bored of overseeing a game that is played the exact same way today as it was at the turn of the millennium. Whatever the case, the hard reality is that the current version of the game has been going the way of Blockbuster and Sears for quite a while. Maybe staff should have done X, Y and Z, but they haven't, whatever the reason may be. If they weren't gonna do it, it serves no purpose to say they should have done it. It's just a waste of breath. We know by now that they weren't gonna do it. Who can look at Arm as it is now, and has been for years, and say they want more of that? Someone without balls, that's who. This game has sucked ass for a very long time, and while there may have been ways to change that fact without such drastic measures as this new project, the undeniable fact is that nobody has done whatever it might have taken to fix it. It's like wishing the weather would get milder, then throwing a fit when someone brings up climate change. There was nothing left of any value in the game, so why fight to keep it this way? It's hard to understand. This is kinda how I feel and why I think the change isn't necessarily a bad thing but will be fucked by staff. The game was stale and broken. Good experiences could be had but those good experiences were circumstance based and luck, or people playing the game for the sole purpose of Lady Shalinga Borsail and her triste affair with Lord Kajkgjkgjgkjbajookie Fale. Then they go on a 15 page rant about how staff did such a good job by doing a single room echo a single time during scene 15 of their 8 book love affair.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,329
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 10, 2023 6:01:26 GMT -5
The seasons idea is good in a vacuum. Other games use a similar structure. Stories, in general, need to have an ending and not just go on forever, or they just get more and more unsatisfying as they drag on.
Armageddon's "endless story" was one that invited complacency not just from the staff supposedly committing to a high-quality collaborative story while doing the bare minimum to actually support it, but to players that tolerated absurdly long wait times on certain types of requests, and roles that require long-term commitments simply because Nyr or Adhira decided it should and no staff member after them decided to change it.
But Armageddon's culture is not okay and never has been. For the players and staff reading this that are hopeful that Armageddon's Seasons Era is going to go well, consider how this plan was communicated to you, and how your acceptance of that mode of communication is going to set the standard for how you are communicated to going forward. Once Halaster knows that people will come back for Season One, and Usiku knows that most of the staff team will not only tolerate being blindfolded for most of the decision-making process, but actually celebrate it in some cases, this method of the producers communicating intent will be set in stone for as long as they are the people in charge of the game. Your time will continue to be wasted and disregarded. Your dissent will continue to be misrepresented as "boo hoo hurt feelings", with the help of unmoderated players that take staff's side, which staff are more than happy for because it's free plausible deniability.
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Post by uncoolio on Dec 10, 2023 20:41:04 GMT -5
Brokkr:
So they legit considered making the game invite-only. Is it possible to state more clearly that staff hates the playerbase and has no respect whatsoever for any but their friends, without just saying it outright? Taking one of the oldest MUDs in existence, the one that created a whole genre of games, where ~150 people still play to this day (well, until last week, anyway) even in its twilight years... and making it invite-only. The fact that they would even consider doing that - and must have considered it strongly enough to warrant mentioning in the Q&A thread - says all that needs to be said about the minds that run the game. They decided against it not because it's a profoundly despicable way to treat their players but because they were worried they would run out of players after a "golden period of consistently good RP." Absolutely reprehensible. Power-tripping pieces of shit. Now I frankly hope the game dies.
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Post by ohmygravy on Dec 10, 2023 21:17:58 GMT -5
How in the holy dripping fuck do you save a game that has a 40 players peak login by making the game invite only?
What the fuck is that? What? How?
Zoomers: "OMG, I really want to play that text based mud game filled with GenXers and boomers now that there's a velvet rope keeping me out."
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Post by gringoose on Dec 10, 2023 21:57:35 GMT -5
I wish them luck, to maintain the motivation needed for months of work to roll out Arm 2.0. And luck that there's enough players willing to play on the launch of it. They should probably ask for player's help to implement it and make submissions.
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