I'm Done With Armageddon

ur mom has mixed feelings

and shes infalliable

I know. I wasted my time acknowledging his original post and he even ignored that to try and shit on me some more.  Oh well.

edited to add: ccp, I guess I'm just a salty tryhard in your eyes. But shit, you come across as really dense, man. I definitely do have mixed feelings about the game. And I never said that I hated it. I don't think anyone on this forum hates the damn game, man. Come on, use your head. We all love the game but are extremely disappointed and regretful of where the years have taken the game and how it continues to falter and stagnant. I've just crossed the threshold where it's not worth my time and I can't really squeeze any more enjoyment out of it with my past experiences and knowledge, like many others. 
 
This whole attitude of "man ur just salty, nobody else is publicly quitting! suck it up!" is just really bizarre. mehtastic is right, it fits the mold of the "MUH CRACKMEDDON!!1" meme perfectly. 

I almost posted on the GDB to make a suggestion. I'm so glad you all were here to stop me. Thanks you guys, my support group.

Well this was an interesting way to be reminded that I wrote that guide. It's definitely interesting to see that not much has changed except for the staff avatar issue which somehow seemed to get seedier.

I'd congratulate you on your success at learning the winning moves to joining and leaving staff, but I'm much more glad that you're starting college and focusing on your own projects and goals.

I've always felt that the "staff cheater" problem was overrated. Didn't see a whole lot of evidence for it myself in modern times, save for a select few isolated incidents. It happened more back in the day, but the likes of Delerak tend to talk about it as if it's rampant and inescapable. In my experience, the problems with the game are not caused by staff using their power to win IC. Who really cares if a third of PC leaders are staff avatars? Many players don't even want to play leadership PCs, and clans often deflate from a lack of leaders because nobody wants the thankless, boring job. If staff will do it, and aren't actively taking the roles out of players' mouths, whatever. The real threat to Armageddon is the fact that there's no forward momentum to any of its stories or major aspects of the setting. Nothing happens.

With recent rulings such as staff avatars not occupying the three slots allotted to sorcerers and psionics, I'm satisfied that they're doing their part to ensure that players aren't directly inconvenienced by what staff do on their mortal characters. I've always been of the opinion that not only should staff play the game, it's actually very important that they do. Some people have voiced the bizarre opinion that staff shouldn't be allowed to play PCs at all, which is insane. It's like insisting that a chef never taste his own cooking. Same kinda goes for staff pets, that's an inevitability and there's no point complaining about it. It's one of the most "benign" problems this game has. Staff is always gonna like some players more than others, it's human nature. I've seen no real signs that any players are getting so much favoritism that it causes problems in the game. That used to happen, but I don't see it anymore.



Thing is that there's two or three clans in the game that offer sparring with any sort of consistency. It's easy to say "just find a mentor" as if you can tear a paper stub off an advertisement and sign up for frequent sparring with a long-lived fighter. The reality is that for most character types, decent training is nearly impossible to find. They really fucked with the program when they introduced the offense vs. defense calculations, the stuff that determines whether or not the thing you're fighting against has high enough skills to let you gain, because that got rid of the only accessible way to get decently high combat skills without winning the lottery with some sensei who inexplicably agrees to train you up from scratch. They provided no alternatives to this, and at this point in time, the playerbase is just too small for it to be realistic to find a so-called mentor. Even if you do join the Byn or a militia, there just might not be such a mentor available. Anywhere else, there certainly won't be.

Because if you try to play a raider or assassin or something like that, and it doesn't suit the concept to first spend 6 RL months in the Byn before you start doing what the character was meant to do, there are basically no options left. What are you meant to do? Attempt to be a raider with apprentice combat skills? Like yeah, it was kind of dumb to skill up against turaals or snakes in the dark, but it was pretty much the only way to actually do it without being OOC buddies with someone who has a long-lived combat char. Even if you do join a militia or the Byn, there's no guarantee that you'll get a lot of worthwhile training. You get up to the bottom of the mid-level point and then it just stalls out unless you match playtimes with someone who's able and willing to train you further, which might just not be a possibility if the stars don't align.

You could get around this in the past. The ways to do it were silly, sure, but it was possible. It was a way to achieve certain goals without pigeonholing yourself into one of the most boring dead-end roles in the game, i.e. militia/Byn lifer. Weight-training might still work to some extent, but you're still tackling the fact that NPCs in this game have systematically been given such low defense that even if you can game the system such that you might get some misses, it won't get you anywhere past the level of okayness. It's as if those in charge of the combat code are irrationally afraid that characters might become impressive fighters without being stabled gladiators.