|
Post by topkekm8s on Oct 27, 2013 10:24:14 GMT -5
People play for different reasons numbnuts
|
|
delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
|
Post by delerak on Oct 27, 2013 11:06:29 GMT -5
The funny thing about this guy is he completely misinterpreted what I was saying. If you read my post in context I wasn't talking about the game world I am talking about the real world. People want knowledge so they can naturally have an edge over their competition. This is a major factor in why people gossip. It's psychology not "this is why I play Arm."
Douche.
|
|
bobo
Clueless newb
Posts: 58
|
Post by bobo on Oct 28, 2013 4:35:06 GMT -5
You can't just suffocate thousands of years of evolution. "Thousands of years of evolution" is responsible for nerds talking about a roleplay game on AIM! You can't make this stuff up. This isn't "psychology." This is at least a dozen notches below quasi-pseudo-pop-psychology. There quite literally do not exist enough disparaging prefixes in the English language to qualify this analysis as any kind of "psychology." It's just a couple of deeply misunderstood and misused phrases -- "survival of the fittest" (SO not relevant--being good at cheating at Arm probably hurts your reproductive chances) and "human nature" (more relevant, but only because it's applicable to everything ever and therefore utterly vague and meaningless) -- blindly asserted with the kind of confidence that should get your photo in the Wikipedia article for the "Dunning-Kruger effect."[/a] Seriously, leave the sciency words out of it and just say that you're cynical and you believe that players of online games are apt to cheat to gain an advantage. That's all you're saying here, and it's a fine point. The fake science, armchair evo-psych crap is just plain absurd.
|
|
delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
|
Post by delerak on Oct 28, 2013 6:25:15 GMT -5
I'm just gonna leave this here... A study conducted at Knox:He found that people wanted dirt on those considered more powerful than themselves. "Pretend you are a caveman living in this little group," says McAndrew. "You want information that will help you do well in that social status in that group. If I find out someone has a broken leg or is having difficulties with their partner I can exploit that information in some way to help better mine." A study conducted by Frank McAndrew, professor of psychology at Knox College From a Berkeley Study: Together, the results from all four experiments show that “when we observe someone behave in an immoral way, we get frustrated,” Willer said. “But being able to communicate this information to others who could be helped makes us feel better.” -To me staff playing avatars is immoral so yes I would 'gossip' about this on aim all the time to make myself feel better. This is why we try to find out who staff are playing. Gossiping is a part of our culture it is basically hardwired into us.(gossiping) is a survival skill. Part of our protection of individuals members or cliques. Gossiping should be treated as our appendix is attached to our bowels useless but needed for survival. People use gossip to warn people about other people even if it is true or not. Sometimes people are afriad of different people or use gossip to get back at people in a way that is safe for the gossip . They can use gossip as a form of negative control. -McAndrew Gossip does have a serious side to it. It’s all to do with being a human being. You simply will not survive unless you can talk about the people you know, exchange information about them and find out more about them. In any kind of organisation, if you’ve got a boss that’s one person you really need to know about – their idiosyncrasies, their peculiarities and their relationships. And so most gossip is focussed upwards – it’s looking up the hierarchy-Professor Emler. head of the School of Human Sciences at Surrey University Sources: abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117367newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/01/17/gossip/www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-gossipwww.open.edu/openlearn/body-mind/psychology/why-do-we-love-gossip
|
|
delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
|
Post by delerak on Oct 28, 2013 6:57:02 GMT -5
Sorry about the format. Just follow the links and read the full articles/studies to get more information.
|
|
|
Post by gloryhound on Dec 24, 2013 3:44:24 GMT -5
In my opinion this really is the staff of "No". That's not even including the Storytellers (who don't seem to have much leeway to do anything). It's the middle and upper level staff that have the say-so.
Every couple of years there is a HRPT which is cool but things are so very quiet in between. Even then it all seems to be done with minimal effort. The volcano for example is what - three room descriptions? - repeated over and over with a bunch of links between rooms. How much work could that really be? When the Bard's Barrel was destroyed and the Red's Retreat eventually installed, it was done so incompletely with remnants of the old descriptions lingering about for such a long time. Why? It just seems like they don't care that much.
Frequent small-scale changes that could make the Known more lively just don't seem to be on the menu, and player requests for such seem to meet a stone wall. It's like the first reaction is always to find an excuse for not doing it.
Here is my hypothesis. The "no new building" etc. rules were announced. Those players who wanted to be able to change something grew frustrated and left or were recruited to builders of Arm 2.0 and burnt out. The rest of the players were finding their enjoyment in a different play style which seems to involve undermining and killing each other over and over, so they hung on. For years staff has been drawn from this filtered player base. So now we have a staff that doesn't see building as very interesting and gives it little priority.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2013 15:55:42 GMT -5
That's not particularly the case, even. There are many storytellers who enjoy building, in fact, when several of the admins, even, were storytellers, they also seemed to enjoy building (Welda, Rathustra). The moratorium on world changes would appear to be something proliferated by the very top tier of staff. Then again, that said, I was very surprised to hear about a recent exchange someone in a sponsored role had with Welda. If you'll pardon the trite expression, all I could think was "Wow, it sounds like she finally drank the kool-aid".
My own random thought: Jesus, I can't believe they banned rape plotlines and with such a blanket, hard-line rule. How very western to make a form of sex worse than torture or death or dismemberment, for one. Secondly, clearly, even a significant portion of the staff disagreed with this, and I'm willing to bet that it was at least half with Adhira "pulling rank" to "decide" regardless of the opinion of others, because each tier up the staffing tree, as you are promoted, you'll find out that your opinion finally "matters". I just can't help but follow the theories of others I've seen posted on it that it's all fine and good until butthurt players get up in arms and the same happens with torture, dismemberment, slavery, etc. How very sad. As it was, it is not like you could actually be forced into a rape plotline without the player in question being banned and the ability to choose to play it out like it never happened, or what have you. I mean, you had to have permission to even pursue that type of plotline, let alone enact it, so it was only (as a rule) happening between consenting adults.
|
|
mood
Displaced Tuluki
JOHN DARNIELLE #1 FANZONE
Posts: 335
|
Post by mood on Jan 1, 2014 18:46:38 GMT -5
or that one time Euronymous namedropped us and sent a bunch of traffic our way. wait what happened lmao
|
|
Hardboiled
Clueless newb
Eggs, their good for you.
Posts: 116
|
Post by Hardboiled on Jan 2, 2014 3:01:27 GMT -5
That's not particularly the case, even. There are many storytellers who enjoy building, in fact, when several of the admins, even, were storytellers, they also seemed to enjoy building (Welda, Rathustra). The moratorium on world changes would appear to be something proliferated by the very top tier of staff. Then again, that said, I was very surprised to hear about a recent exchange someone in a sponsored role had with Welda. If you'll pardon the trite expression, all I could think was "Wow, it sounds like she finally drank the kool-aid". My own random thought: Jesus, I can't believe they banned rape plotlines and with such a blanket, hard-line rule. How very western to make a form of sex worse than torture or death or dismemberment, for one. Secondly, clearly, even a significant portion of the staff disagreed with this, and I'm willing to bet that it was at least half with Adhira "pulling rank" to "decide" regardless of the opinion of others, because each tier up the staffing tree, as you are promoted, you'll find out that your opinion finally "matters". I just can't help but follow the theories of others I've seen posted on it that it's all fine and good until butthurt players get up in arms and the same happens with torture, dismemberment, slavery, etc. How very sad. As it was, it is not like you could actually be forced into a rape plotline without the player in question being banned and the ability to choose to play it out like it never happened, or what have you. I mean, you had to have permission to even pursue that type of plotline, let alone enact it, so it was only (as a rule) happening between consenting adults. I didn't want to say anything for the longest time. However, when people say this is a slippery slope to disneyfication they aren't kidding. Its really stupid to say rape is no longer allowed but gruesome graphic torture and brutal murder is prefectly fine. Lets not forget you can still make 13 or 14 year old underdeveloped characters and have much older character mudsex them too. How can staff say one is okay but the other one isn't? And thus the slippery slope begins. I could have seen them bump the starting age up, that I would have understood as something in better taste but no, instead we have no more rape plots after about twenty fucking years of this game running its adult theme. I did get the impression from some of the comments made by staff themselves that this was forced by producers/higher level staff. It did not seem unanimous but I won't be blaming adhira since i don't know the whole story. It is probably just coincidence she leaves for break, comes back and suddenly this happens. I'm pretty sure its only a matter of time before we find out the truth anyways. On a side note, while I generally like morgenes I really wish he'd stop spewing the whole staff volunteer shit.He makes it sound like being on staff is like giving up your kidney or volunteering for a suicide mission. Sorry but if staff is volunteering their time, then you could practically say players are volunteering their time too. You don't want to play by the rules as a player, you leave. You don't want to actually do staffing, you leave as well. I've said it before Armageddon is a collaborative effort at this point and if the code every became public, you would see how many people would 'volunteer' their time and money to running the game themselves.We've recently seen that Adhira has returned to the game, so it is obvious people want to 'volunteer' their time. Adhira in particular has often made it sound like staffing is just a chore for her. Even participating on the GDB has seemed like its a pain and annoyance for her. I was happy to see she might have moved on to do something she thought was more productive with her time but here we see her decide to come back to something she seems to hate to do. The really sad part is how current staff make it seem as if there aren't enough people willing to do any of the work. However from what we've heard here it not that people don't want to code or run their own plots and stories but rather higher level staff continuously hinders people from being able to contribute more.
|
|
delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
|
Post by delerak on Jan 2, 2014 12:13:00 GMT -5
Okay here I go.
The rape ban to me is Arm recognizing that their pbase is changing. You know that "hardcore" mode that some games have (diablo 3 recently). Well Arms pbase during the golden years were very hardcore. Most of us were down for whatever, we were already exposed to gratuitous violence in movies and video games, so reading about it is no big deal. Rape is a hot topic in American society right now. My guess is they've been spending a LOT of time dealing with people complaining about it. This will sound dumb but basically bitches, pussies, softies. People who are thin skinned and have no business being around somebody like me for starters. These people can dish it out but can't take it. They have emotional issues. They get offended at stuff. Whatever. Rant over. This is why Arm is changing. They have more of these people now then ever before.
They kind of brought this on themselves. Always with those vote threads and stuff. Typical American mentality, MORE MORE MORE. GROW GROW GROW. Problem is there is this thing called exponential growth demise. You can only grow so much before you basically wear thin your resources. Arm doesn't really have any resources except volunteer staff. People who have probably nothing else in the world but to play a game they love, and hey there is nothing wrong with that. But Adhira is obviously involved. I don't care too much about the issue but I think it boils down to the pbase. It could very well be the doing of one or two higher ups but I doubt it. I don't think they would do something like this without knowing that they were going to lose a lot of players if they did NOT do it. Because I don't think anybody is going to stop playing because of this. How many players actually engage in rape plots? I can't say I've ever even been involved in one. Though I do remember one of my PCs getting slept by a ruk and him proceeding to rape my PC without ooc consent. I never cared though so that never even came to light. That PC died 2 seconds later.
TL;DR - Arm is a different game today then it ever was in the past and this is just further proof that the game is trending to a more casual player.
|
|
moontug
staff puppet account
Posts: 10
|
Post by moontug on Jan 2, 2014 18:11:08 GMT -5
Hey, just goes to show that players can influence the game world after all Re: Delerak, I think you hit the nail on the head about a changing pbase and growing pains, but I think it's more nuanced than that. In particular, I think there is an ongoing centralization of the greater MUD community which is turning cream of the crop MUDs like Arm into melting pots. This means there are more players who are more casual than we ever were in our heyday (e.g., pussies), but it also means that there are more players from offcolor games like HellMOO. I imagine it's like someone is ripping open an interdimensional portal between some perverted layer of hell and the peaceful kingdom of fieldmice and Arm is in the middle of it. And it's actually pretty funny to look at objectively. Anyway, my point is that there is probably also a greater number of interactions going beyond the limits of good taste than there used to be (too). This is probably creating OOC drama that the staff has to deal with, doesn't want to deal with, and so had to awkwardly retrofit this policy onto the game world. I have a feeling that there will be more to come in the future, probably to address some of the 'inconsistencies' Hardboiled mentioned.
|
|
|
Post by jcarter on Jan 2, 2014 18:40:10 GMT -5
On a side note, while I generally like morgenes I really wish he'd stop spewing the whole staff volunteer shit.He makes it sound like being on staff is like giving up your kidney or volunteering for a suicide mission. Sorry but if staff is volunteering their time, then you could practically say players are volunteering their time too. You don't want to play by the rules as a player, you leave. You don't want to actually do staffing, you leave as well. I've said it before Armageddon is a collaborative effort at this point and if the code every became public, you would see how many people would 'volunteer' their time and money to running the game themselves.We've recently seen that Adhira has returned to the game, so it is obvious people want to 'volunteer' their time. Adhira in particular has often made it sound like staffing is just a chore for her. Even participating on the GDB has seemed like its a pain and annoyance for her. I was happy to see she might have moved on to do something she thought was more productive with her time but here we see her decide to come back to something she seems to hate to do. The really sad part is how current staff make it seem as if there aren't enough people willing to do any of the work. However from what we've heard here it not that people don't want to code or run their own plots and stories but rather higher level staff continuously hinders people from being able to contribute more. Yeah that always made me roll my eyes. You're 'volunteering' to play a collaborative game and add to it because you enjoy it, just like players 'volunteer' to make RPTs and submit content. You do it because it's fun and enjoyable. There's parts that aren't fun I'm sure, like reviewing special apps, but players have those moments too. I never cared for the stupid Byn chores, especially when no other players were around, but still stuck to it roleplaying cutting tubers or lunch or whatever because hey that's the game and maybe someone else will show up or something. It's annoying to sometimes to send in reports as a clan lead and constantly keep people with access to logs up to date on things, but it gets done anyway and without complaint. From the way staff talk about how they're just volunteers you'd think they were in the back of a soup kitchen scrubbing dishes for 8 hours.
|
|
|
Post by jcarter on Jan 2, 2014 18:59:49 GMT -5
or that one time Euronymous namedropped us and sent a bunch of traffic our way. wait what happened lmao Pretty much just what was said, there was some thread about bitter players or something and Eurononymous made an offhand comment like 'or they go post on jcarter's boards' and at least 2 people signed up and said they found the place from that post.
|
|
delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
|
Post by delerak on Jan 2, 2014 19:07:39 GMT -5
Where do movies stand on this whole rape thing. Is Clockwork Orange really that bad?
I've watched a lot of fucked up shit due to my own morbid fascinations I think and its disturbing but I don't think it's damaging in anyway. Maybe I'm just the exception.
|
|
moontug
staff puppet account
Posts: 10
|
Post by moontug on Jan 2, 2014 19:57:17 GMT -5
Clockwork Orange the book is even more graphic than the movie (although a lot of the nastiest violence is "hidden" amid artsy language, unlike, e.g. American Psycho which was so gross and explicit my eyes kept going but my brain stopped reading in some spots). I think a lot of players would have trouble outdoing Ellis, really... I guess the problem was more players were encountering it than wanted to?
It would be interesting if the staff posted some numbers, like "this month we had 13 instances of players complaining about non-consent scenes which ate up an estimated 20 or so hours of staff time", or "here is an example, with details revoked, of the kind of interaction we've been having a lot of trouble with lately." I think it was just a vague" this is taking up too much time" so we can only speculate I guess.
|
|