gibb
staff puppet account
Posts: 15
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Post by gibb on Dec 10, 2023 22:31:51 GMT -5
Closing the game for months to implement this says two things to me: 1. They don't care about the players. 2. They are incompetent. RIP Arm. Maybe after the game dies they will open source it and someone can revive it. Otherwise Apoc just became the new Arm.
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joe
Clueless newb
Posts: 54
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Post by joe on Dec 10, 2023 22:45:43 GMT -5
And mods are out there deleting the 'negative reactions' to the comments about invite only, not a democracy, okay with less players, etc etc....
Instead of deleting the offensive comments. It's hurtful, but it's some dark comedy to watch this same shit play out again.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,329
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 11, 2023 5:06:03 GMT -5
The fact that they even considered an invite-only model just goes to show how little the staff respect the playerbase. They see the quality of RP is not to their liking, so they consider one possible solution to just boot the players they don't like and only invite back the players they do like, which would inevitably end up being a smaller and smaller group of close friends. Brokkr's post is almost written as a threat in the style of: "If you guys think this seasons thing is bad, just look how much worse it could have been for you." He explains how staff will have more time to work on the game in the seasons model and how the relationship between staff and players will improve, then launches into "well if you don't like that, we could've just made you leave". Not surprising if you already look at the relationship between players and staff as a toxic one, but of course, for some players, this is their very first time realizing it.
Honestly, not even Nyr or Nergal were this hostile to the mere idea of having a playerbase. At least they had some redeeming qualities and a work ethic. What redeeming qualities do the current producers have? It's like they took Nessalin's old "joke" - "Armageddon would be great if it wasn't for the players" - and took it 100% seriously.
ETA: Another way to look at this revelation is that the seasons model is just like the invite model, but self-selecting. The staff know that the only people that are going to go along for the ride are the people that support staff implicitly. It is far easier to keep the door open to the groveling players looking for their next fix than it is to keep a running list of prisoner functionaries that are trusted enough to get a written invitation.
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Post by kiyetdreams on Dec 11, 2023 8:24:48 GMT -5
To be fair, we have all known for quite a long while, that staff direct what we do, even if we do not think it. A lot of them have puppeted players for years, and those that don't, haven't lasted very long, and stepped away. All the way up until now, a lot of staff have been using OOC knowledge from being staff, to guide their characters IG to benefit them, yet claim that they do not. And a LOT of staff talk to players OOC when they dictate that players are not allowed to do it with one another. This sandbox idea where they call t he shots is only bringing out in to the open with a 'new direction' cover over it, what they have been doing all along, but, now they are making it seem like it is a good idea. And making it 'invite only', will just have their favorite players there, and them being able to tug their puppet strings to dance how they want them to.
The toxicity of the staff team has just hit critical point now, and, a lot of people are now wiser to it, is the only difference.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,329
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 11, 2023 9:00:22 GMT -5
Yep, sadly this is the first time a lot of people are realizing that the producers view them as expendable and interchangeable. The signs were always there. Frankly a lot of these people have only benefited from the way the producers treat the playerbase until now and don't deserve anyone's pity. But there are a few who just never interacted with the wider community enough to know how indifferent the producers are to them. It's really too bad.
As for staff hypocrisy, I have seen people mentioning that it's a good thing that staff won't be able to play while they are running a season. Presumably, staff will rotate in and out of the team so that they can run season one, play season two, etc. I think these players are naive. They are forgetting that staff are more than happy to change their own rules to better suit their needs, and that staff are more than happy to give insider information to their friends OOCly. Season one may run as described, but it only takes one fit of producer whimsy for them to say "actually, we'll play now" and boom, it's back to the rampant cheating we've seen already.
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,035
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Post by punished ppurg on Dec 11, 2023 10:08:11 GMT -5
These developments and rhetoric reveals an administrative body that doesn't like its playerbase. It reminds me of HellMOO closing for the first time, then going on to be clubhouseMOO for a bit before opening back up. Would moving to invite-only "fix" some of the rp issues? Sure! But the "staff experience" as it is right now is not conducive to an invite only game.
Armageddon has the playerbase that it deserves, I guess. It has the one it's cultivated. Maybe Arm is suffering enough from the total sum of its administrators' decisions that it's poisoning itself. Put me out of my misery.
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Post by uncoolio on Dec 11, 2023 11:28:58 GMT -5
If they wanted a higher standard of roleplay, maybe they should have thought about encouraging and facilitating this. They could have emphasized quality writing and believable characterization when awarding karma, instead of caring almost exclusively about politeness towards staff and time served as clanlead. They could have stepped in when idiot griefers were doing their thing, instead of telling the victims to suck it up because it's a HaRsH dEsErT wOrLd. They could have recognized that they let the game stagnate to a point where the playerbase had collectively given up on trying to make anything happen, and reversed that trend by giving them something to work with and create interesting roleplay. They could have adopted a more modern emoting format instead of sticking with the painfully cumbersome and restrictive 'say (nodding to ~man) blabla' and the line-and-a-half output limit. There's a whole lot they could have done to improve the quality of roleplay in their game, but they didn't. They sat around feeding favors to their handpicked friends while the rest of the game fell apart due to the almost complete absence of staff attention for anyone who wasn't part of the small in-group that staff cares about. People got away with playing habits that can barely be called roleplaying because nobody upstairs gave a shit, or seemingly even noticed because staff pretty much ignores you if you aren't in a sponsored role or on their Discord friend list.
They don't get to complain about the quality of RP on Arm. The quality of RP on Arm reflects the way they run it. They haven't lifted a finger to encourage or acknowledge those who make an effort to portray a character with more than nods and grunts, and they've rewarded some seriously shitty players with karma because they were willing to play the game-within-a-game of cheerleading for staff and enduring the crushing boredom of sponsored roles for long enough to qualify as one of the faithful. This is the game they have made, and they don't get to act like it's beneath them. It's they who failed to maintain an acceptable standard.
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ask
Clueless newb
Posts: 113
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Post by ask on Dec 11, 2023 14:11:13 GMT -5
Listen, Brokkr told me that I requested "too much" from staff when I asked them to see if an item (a possibly Kuraci knife that sometimes doubled your harvesting of plantlife/vegetation when inhand) was still available in their database, and I even gave him possible keywords to go off of. I don't know if he didn't realize I'd been staff before or what, but if he thinks it took "too many staff resources" to try to find me a god damned knife with the olist/search/find function, then he in NO WAY has the stamina to make an entirely new game, even if it is much smaller in scope. They're fooling themselves. None of them have the drive for this. NONE of them. Anyway, FutureMUD is a pretty dope engine, if any of you have the inclination to make your own. Seriously. It might be worth a looksee for anyone inclined by this colossal heartbreak of a mess. Hell, a Tolkien based MUD could probably be up and running and functional in a couple of months because all of the races and things are already pre-baked. At this rate, there's just no coming back for Arm. Honestly, staff are upstairs layabouts. They're do-nothing landlords, presiding over the decaying kingdom of their shitty sandbox that they wanted to make invite only. Also, a quick reminder -- Brokkr only got to where he was by being seriously mediocre. He and Seidhr had no noteworthy characters before joining staff (and then cheated on their sorcerer PCs when they got to admin levels) and enjoyed dishing out cruel punishment whenever they got together to animate in the south, just for shits and random giggles. Sure, Allanak is supposed to be harsh, but you can give players that agency, you don't need to be the all-powerful personifications of assholery while responding to a 2000 word character report with, "Noted." only to then close it out.
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Post by ohmygravy on Dec 11, 2023 20:29:44 GMT -5
I started back up with Arm after a like 4 year long break just about 3 weeks ago. I couldn't bother to login anymore after this announcement. At first I was bummed because I was getting into the game but now I like Apoc so much that it feels like an upgrade.
Yeah, it's in a honeymoon period and I'm sure there will be the same problems that always happen when you get a bunch of longwinded, heavily opinionated types like all of us together but right now it's just such a breath of fresh air.
Just wish they hadn't used the name Apoc since I feel like a lot of people think of the Arm rip off from the 2000s. It's obviously based on armsolo but they really are trying to do their own Dark Sun thing and it shows.
I login and I don't feel like I'm watching every move I make for fear of running afoul of whatever pet peeves a given Imm has that happens to notice me.
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bebop
Clueless newb
Posts: 106
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Post by bebop on Dec 11, 2023 22:03:16 GMT -5
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Post by najdorf on Dec 12, 2023 11:30:59 GMT -5
I'm really glad this shit happened. Finally I quit it for life, deleted gdb, left discord, deleted client and script files. Even on a game so addictive, it takes heaps to make people quit, so staff has some skill on that for sure.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,329
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 12, 2023 14:05:48 GMT -5
I've been lurking in the game's Discord, and the atmosphere feels more hostile than usual. Lots of people snapping at each other, lots of people throwing random baseless accusations at others for no apparent reason. Feels like you can literally see the community collapsing in real time. And I genuinely cannot think of a MUD community more deserving of collapse than Armageddon's.
ETA: Well I guess there's that pedo mush. Okay, I genuinely can't think of a community more deserving of collapse than Armageddon's and the pedo mush.
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ask
Clueless newb
Posts: 113
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Post by ask on Dec 13, 2023 8:49:25 GMT -5
I've been lurking in the game's Discord, and the atmosphere feels more hostile than usual. Lots of people snapping at each other, lots of people throwing random baseless accusations at others for no apparent reason. Feels like you can literally see the community collapsing in real time. And I genuinely cannot think of a MUD community more deserving of collapse than Armageddon's.
ETA: Well I guess there's that pedo mush. Okay, I genuinely can't think of a community more deserving of collapse than Armageddon's and the pedo mush.
Haven, you're thinking of Haven. Don't let the door hitcha, Arm. Actually, do.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,329
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 13, 2023 9:19:49 GMT -5
Seven full days after the announcement: Also, the game's updates page is reporting 77 unique logins so far this week. Usually on a Wednesday morning it's about 100. If the trend holds this could be the first week the game has under 100 unique logins. It's worth noting that the MSSP data in the graphs, like the unique logins data, counts logged-in staff members - so it is possible to see 0-1 players in "who" while the MSSP data is reporting 5-6 logins. The game had more staff members logged into it than players for much of the past week. Internally, staff are supposedly banking on departing players returning for season one. Even if this ends up panning out, they would be returning to a community that is proving to be terribly cannibalistic. They know that Shalooonsh and Katima are not the last of their troubles and it's only a matter of time before the wheel spins and lands on some other dunce on the team to fuck up the game even further.
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,035
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Post by punished ppurg on Dec 13, 2023 9:45:34 GMT -5
I've been lurking in the game's Discord, and the atmosphere feels more hostile than usual. Lots of people snapping at each other, lots of people throwing random baseless accusations at others for no apparent reason. Feels like you can literally see the community collapsing in real time. And I genuinely cannot think of a MUD community more deserving of collapse than Armageddon's. ETA: Well I guess there's that pedo mush. Okay, I genuinely can't think of a community more deserving of collapse than Armageddon's and the pedo mush.
Haven, you're thinking of Haven. Haven is pedo mush no longer. The head dev raised minimum ages to 18 and more recently changed the Institute so that you can't have sex on college grounds. Supernatural abstinence. Get your facts straight, boys. If you're going to drag a MUD then you're going to do it with accurate information on these here shadowboards. I invite all Armageddon players who are lacking a MUD from the recent change of events, to come give Haven a try, where I promise I will be the one molesting you instead of the staff. It's a good change of pace, you'll really learn to love it. It's alternative to going to Sindome like some of the RPI nerds are. Does anyone want to check Sindome's average over the past week and see the 5-8 player average bump?
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