lurker
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Post by lurker on Dec 13, 2023 10:22:57 GMT -5
Also, random thought I will just throw out there: Armageddon Seasons is an idea born from the decline of the playerbase and the growing inability to actually fill the gameworld with players. Additionally, staff are too stretched thin. The single biggest decline in the playerbase came from the complete mishandling of Shalooonsh and driving away dozens of players rather than do anything about the elephant in the room. The driving away of players did not only occur towards the end of Shalooonsh's tenure in the game, but all throughout his tenure, with players and staff members silently leaving after watching in horror as the game continued to defend and retain him. From the time the staff pushed Nergal away because he proposed Shalooonsh be punished for his misbehavior, to the time Shabago allowed themselves to be debased by Shalooonsh's request to make his firing look like a voluntary departure. Ergo, all the people that supported Malifaxis/Shalooonsh over the years, declaring him a good writer, a necessity to keep around in the game, a driving force behind plots, etc. are at least partially responsible for this outcome. From the current and former staff that defended Shalooonsh, to the players that were part of Malifaxis's clique, you all made this happen. So good job, guys. I sincerely hope you get what you worked towards. This aged nicely. The Katima deal just killed what's left of the playerbase. At this point, with people claiming they made players off themselves, it's time to hit that ol' dusty trail. I think maybe the rules themselves breed toxicity. You have a game where no one is allowed to know who plays who, except staff. OFC staff's morals will slowly degrade.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 13, 2023 10:41:05 GMT -5
I think maybe the rules themselves breed toxicity. You have a game where no one is allowed to know who plays who, except staff. OFC staff's morals will slowly degrade. This is definitely true. I will never claim that other games are drama-free, but there is certainly a lot less drama compared to Arm in the games where everyone knows who everyone else is playing and there is regular OOC discussion of non-secret IC world events. There are even games that have logs on the website of most/all public scenes. But Arm's community conditions themselves to think that they cannot handle openness, to give cover to people like Katima and Shaloooonsh who use the secrecy as a cover for their abusive behavior.
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Post by ohmygravy on Dec 13, 2023 14:36:52 GMT -5
22 players logged in on average 12/5.
5 players logged in on average 12/13.
It's remarkable, really, that Halaster et al are now so dug in on this change that they'd rather push on ahead with it than do anything even remotely close to negotiating with the playerbase on what would make "Seasons" work for them.
We're at that point in an internet debate where someone would rather see the world burn than admit they not only handled something wrong but might actually have made the wrong decision.
RIP Arm. Even just a week's worth of interacting with current/former Arm players and staff has exposed me to a truly insane amount of toxicity.
I'll always miss that Armageddon that was, but I think 1/2 of the pba se and nearly all of the staff are some of the most dysfunctional people I've ever encountered on the internet and that's really fucking saying something.
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Post by uncoolio on Dec 13, 2023 16:18:22 GMT -5
It's such an own goal, too. It's not as if this Seasons Project was some inevitability that they were forced to undertake. It came out of absolutely nowhere, unwanted by nearly the entire community, and literally killed the game overnight. Instead, they could have announced Project Acually Run Plots and Make the Game Less Dead. It's entirely within their means to do so, they just don't want to. Nobody can say that they genuinely don't have enough people on staff to orchestrate a few overarching storylines that give players something to work with and a reason to log in from day to day. They could have created new hype for the game right before the holiday season where people have days off. Instead they destroyed the game right before Christmas. I've staffed on other RPIs. It doesn't take that much to get the ball rolling. Put in a few hours of work and you'll have something that can fuel a week's worth of hype for dozens of players. Nobody demands a metaplot with a scope as grand as Game of Thrones. Just something tangible that players can get involved in and/or use as material for their own story-branches. Something worth reacting to, something that feels like it matters. Not this rock-bottom bullshit they've been lazily regurtitating, where the gith are vaguely coming but then literal months go by where you don't hear anything whatsoever. Instead of doing that, which would absolutely be within their means if they had any sort of desire to do anything for the playerbase, they let the game crumble around them and then suddenly announced something so unpalatable and so unrealistically ambitious that the entire community said "fuck it, that's that, goodbye Armageddon." And now the game is dead, with just the faint hope of this mystery project, on which no work has yet been done because staff hasn't even decided how they're going to do it, as the only chance that Arm might rise from the dead some day in the unspecified future.
And the ones who are supposed to accomplish that are the same ones who let the game crumble for years because they didn't give a enough of a shit about it. Now they're amazed that the playerbase doesn't have any faith in them and has already written Arm's eulogy.
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Patuk
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Post by Patuk on Dec 13, 2023 17:30:41 GMT -5
It's such an own goal, too. It's not as if this Seasons Project was some inevitability that they were forced to undertake. It came out of absolutely nowhere, unwanted by nearly the entire community, and literally killed the game overnight. Instead, they could have announced Project Acually Run Plots and Make the Game Less Dead. It's entirely within their means to do so, they just don't want to. [/div][/quote] This is my view as well. They don't need to shut the MUD down. They don't need to build up a whole-ass new gameworld, every year, to do this stuff. They have the biggest staff-to-player ratio I know of in MUD land, and could just.. Do stuff. But they don't want to. They don't want to be present, do cool shit, be excellent. It drips from people like Katima, who take character and cackle at them like 'puppies'; it shows in any conversation anyone has had with Brokkr, ever, who has gone on record multiple times as not wanting to engage with people; it shows in the way they make these decisions without even telling their very own staffers. Fair enough. If you don't care to run a game, I don't care to play it. But don't then turn around and insist it's super duper for the best of everyone and you totally love it: we can smell the insincerity. We can't tell it isn't so. The lies degrade yourself as much as they show your contempt for anyone reading them.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 13, 2023 19:46:54 GMT -5
A small part of me hates that staff and their attack dogs were saying since 2013 that the shadowboard was trying to kill the game, then after 10 years of us not killing the game, they go and kill the game themselves. Sad.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 14, 2023 5:52:48 GMT -5
There was a brief rally on Discord to get people to log in, but of course most people there have huffed Arm too long and are now too stupid to understand how averages work. 21 players at 3:00 GMT down to 8 players at 4:00 GMT, and back to the usual decline. If you're going to kill it, at least let it die with dignity.
Editing to add: Or don't! Messing with public data like this just helps create the false perception that the game is doing well, which will just cause staff to keep going with their current plan, which is killing the game. All roads lead to Rome.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 14, 2023 10:16:16 GMT -5
58 more days of what we've seen for the past week. Plenty of time to call the coroner.
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jkarr
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Post by jkarr on Dec 14, 2023 10:58:23 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. dude ur blowing this waaay out of proportion its just the holiday slump
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Post by Azerbanjani on Dec 14, 2023 13:13:16 GMT -5
It's just the post staff-abuse slump we get it'll be back up in a week!
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Post by ohmygravy on Dec 14, 2023 16:13:30 GMT -5
dude ur blowing this waaay out of proportion its just the holiday slump This is good for bitcoin
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Post by dumpsterfirediva on Dec 14, 2023 16:54:04 GMT -5
This is good for bitcoin. The hell you say. Good for bitcoin!?!?
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Post by ohmygravy on Dec 15, 2023 18:42:36 GMT -5
There are players still in both major cities as well as RSV and rolling around Independent. While I can understand the desire to consolidate at this point, I don't want to direct players to a particular area and away from other active players who are still trying to accomplish things with long-lived PCs. It's pretty much an even split. Except Luir's, I wouldn't bother with Luir's. 2+ months left before they shut down and you have exchanges like this. Like, why even bother? Shut it down today and then just spend the 3x as long as you think it'll take to prepare for the first season and maybe some of the people who have no intention of ever coming back will get over what happened and check it out out of morbid curiosity. I really feel like they're shooting themselves in the foot here by keeping it open. Well, that's after nuking themselves in the foot with this thing in the first place...
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Post by uncoolio on Dec 15, 2023 22:35:42 GMT -5
It's certainly odd to see players demand the right to play out the remainder of their character's stories. I'm left wondering: what stories? And who with? What's it worth at this point?
Even before the big announcement, the game was completely lifeless. Where are these big, important stories that people are so adamant on finishing? And even if a few lucky players did have something of real depth going on, something so meaningful that it would be worth holding the entire community up for two more months in order to see it out, there's nobody there to share it with. The game is effectively over already.
It seems weirdly selfish and greedy to insist that your own personal story (which is, in all likelihood, irrelevant to everybody else) must reach its conclusion, given the fact that most of the playerbase has abandoned the game in large part because the remaining time is a pointless nothingburger and the new version is about five months away, even if we pretend to believe that season 1 will be on time. They could cut that almost in half by getting started now instead of indulging a handful of stubborn players with inflated self-importance.
It's a matter of course that Arm will lose even more players because of this unnecessary waste of time. I fully expect that the number of players the game will end up having lost due to this two-month death with a whimper is greater than the number of players whose characters were doing anything important enough that they have any business demanding some grand conclusion. How significant can your darling character's arc really be if it can still reach a meaningful conclusion after almost everybody has quit playing?
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bebop
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Post by bebop on Dec 16, 2023 1:05:19 GMT -5
It's certainly odd to see players demand the right to play out the remainder of their character's stories. I'm left wondering: what stories? And who with? What's it worth at this point? The secret sauce is addiction.
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