mehtastic
GDB Superstar
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Posts: 1,699
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 2, 2019 6:44:27 GMT -5
A disturbingly large chunk of the playerbase are bootlickers who are happy for any attention from staff, even if it's extremely negative, because it shows they care... somehow. I can't count the number of times where I talked to people who were grateful for animations, even when those animations made no sense or were outright hostile and/or directed to injure or kill a PC for no apparent reason. If this interaction were taking place IRL within a household it would be considered emotional abuse.
Maybe some self-respecting people will realize that Shalooonsh's contributions are actually bad, and beyond the fact that he carries the team on character applications, he actually serves no purpose to the staff team.
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faroukel
Displaced Tuluki
What's a story without a villain?
Posts: 201 
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Post by faroukel on Oct 2, 2019 8:35:29 GMT -5
A disturbingly large chunk of the Human Race are bootlickers who are happy for any attention from complete strangers, even if it's extremely negative. |
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delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,670
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Post by delerak on Oct 2, 2019 8:51:20 GMT -5
Most people just want to be happy, have a family and enjoy life. The vast majority of things you hear are negative because no one talks about the positive stuff, it's been proven in studies time and time again.
Also I see a ton of pessimism and cynicism here. Not exactly a recipe for anything productive. Not to say I don't see the same at the GDB or the internet in general, the optimists tend to just stay away and say 'fuck that not worth my time.'
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mehtastic
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Posts: 1,699
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 2, 2019 8:58:32 GMT -5
I'm optimistic that the staff team sees its own flaws and is looking to fix them. I'm glad to shine a light on the crap that's visibly happening and I expect/hope it will be fixed. Contrary to popular belief no one here is trying to destroy the game. Constructive criticism makes things better, let's not confuse criticism for pessimism.
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faroukel
Displaced Tuluki
What's a story without a villain?
Posts: 201
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Post by faroukel on Oct 2, 2019 9:25:48 GMT -5
personally, dont get it myself.
Is it so hard to not be shitty?
Like, if I kept hearing my neighbours complain about how I park my car in the driveway, or how I always forget to put the lid on my garbage...over and over again, for years... I'd probably take the minor action required to fix it just because, let alone, to stop the whining and be in peace.
Instead, the common reaction seems to be doubling down on being a turd..
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,699
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 2, 2019 9:38:33 GMT -5
It's pretty easy to not be shitty, what's hard is admitting you were shitty in the first place. Stopping being shitty requires an admission, implicit or otherwise, that you were shitty in the first place. It's simply easier to double down than it is to admit you were wrong. That's why Shabago's response is so remarkable: although it straddles the line between doubling down and an admission of shittiness, it at least admits that a staff member was shitty to another player.
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Post by shakes on Oct 2, 2019 12:03:48 GMT -5
I'd make an awesome storyteller if I could stand the restrictions. But I've burned all my bridges with staff at this point. They wouldn't give me a sponsored role to be the head dung sweeper in Allanak, much less a storyteller position.  But there's some good guys who could step up their game. Just because Shalooonsh stays connected and does all the character apps doesn't mean they wouldn't. He just may get to them first. It's not guaranteed if you booted Shalooonsh that it would be 5 days to get an approval and that all the clans would die off. I suspect there's plenty of people who simply won't play anywhere underneath him at this point. Hopefully they've formed their own opinion and not simply come to that conclusion from the anecdotes shared thus far, but it's a thing. |
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baobob
Clueless newb
Posts: 119
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Post by baobob on Oct 2, 2019 12:58:07 GMT -5
On the plus side, removing Seidr was a huge, long overdue step. He was a creepy inescapable nightmare for female players and their female characters.
My experience with Akariel was just that they seemed to be an unexceptionable turd, over-interested in judging play instead of enabling it.
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mehtastic
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Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,699
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 2, 2019 13:51:07 GMT -5
I'd make an awesome storyteller if I could stand the restrictions. But I've burned all my bridges with staff at this point. They wouldn't give me a sponsored role to be the head dung sweeper in Allanak, much less a storyteller position. But there's some good guys who could step up their game. Just because Shalooonsh stays connected and does all the character apps doesn't mean they wouldn't. He just may get to them first. It's not guaranteed if you booted Shalooonsh that it would be 5 days to get an approval and that all the clans would die off. I suspect there's plenty of people who simply won't play anywhere underneath him at this point. Hopefully they've formed their own opinion and not simply come to that conclusion from the anecdotes shared thus far, but it's a thing. I would agree, and even extend this by saying that Shalooonsh is extremely replaceable. If his "strong suits" are that he approves character apps quickly and he animates a lot, that can be accounted for by someone willing to do the same work he does and behave decently too. Anecdotes are really only the last piece of forming an opinion, IMO. If someone reading this thread has only ever had good interactions with Shalooonsh, they shouldn't think Shalooonsh is a bad staffer - a bad communicator, perhaps, but not a bad staffer. But if you had a bad experience with Shalooonsh personally, then read stories of other people having similarly bad experiences, and see Shalooonsh behaving like an ass on the GDB... well, you'd be pretty silly not to have a generally poor opinion of him then. This is why I brought up his plainly visible behavior, because it's the first crack. Previously he was containing his shittiness to private conversations and, occasionally, the Discord channel for the game, and now he's expanded that shittiness to the GDB. That said, it's been a few days and I expect at this point that staff's reaction will be muted, if anything at all. They will probably reinstate the policy on storytellers avoiding public commentary on the GDB. Ironically, staff and the shadowboard generally agree on one thing: the GDB is generally a shit place for discussion (of course, we disagree on why that is the case). It will be fairly easy to tell staffers to avoid the GDB and consider it as more of a necessary evil to appear to maintain a community, rather than go full SOI and close the forum for a while. A dead forum usually results in a dead game for RPIs. |
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
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Post by punished ppurg on Oct 2, 2019 14:03:27 GMT -5
A dead forum usually results in a dead game for RPIs. It only proves how many of the oldbies are there to play the community, not play the game. But I digress to another tangent: character approval turnabout is not a legitimate reason to keep a person on the team in the face of degenerating the public discourse. If Armageddon has an issue with character approval workflow (with its mind-boggling team of 21 staffers) that removing one will grind things to a halt, there needs to be a coded solution. That's what I'm all about: coded solutions. It's sad that the Armageddon code is such a muddled mess of technical debt that the staff team chooses to build precedent and case-by-case resolutions around the game framework rather than embedding a coded solution.
Easy solution: if you have 2+ karma and a 1 year old account, you can write and approve your own character descriptions. You're expected to know enough about the game that you can approve it yourself. You can still submit characters for approval (such as muls or sorcerers if that's your prerogative), but you also have the liberty of creating your own boy. Should a player abuse this and roll in something horrible, they have their karma set to 0. That's a powerful disincentive and should preemptively eliminate any trolling attempts.
There. We've solved workflow. Let the storytellers get back to doing nothing, or whatever it is they do.
Are there issues with this solution? Not nearly so many issues as advocating for Shalooonsh to stay on the team by the merit he's NEET enough to turn around the most character approvals.
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Post by shakes on Oct 2, 2019 14:09:50 GMT -5
There are SO many storytellers with a nice, soft touch. Let them do the player communications.
Or heck, some of the helpers. Expand their roles.
I've recently heard from several people that Shalooonsh's caustic behavior on the Arm Discord channel has driven them from the channel. Since that's a help channel they pull in newbies through, I really think that ought be brought under control SWIFTLY.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 2, 2019 14:25:17 GMT -5
The Discord channel's toxicity is mentioned in a ton of negative reviews of the game by people who tried Armageddon and decided to leave. Frankly, the Discord was the last great gift Nergal gave to the Armageddon Destroyers' Club that totally exists. Staff need to reassess how they use Discord as a platform for discussing the game, in terms of fostering positive discussion vs. random textual diarrhea. Shutting it down is as much of an option as shutting down the GDB; it's a white elephant that, if taken away from the players, will drive players' accusations of the staff silencing discussion.
Seriously though, a small communications team would do wonders for Armageddon. Speaking for myself, I don't think it would be enough to bring me back, but it would be enough for me to take an interest in public staff communications. Currently this consists of occasional changelogs and role calls, spotted with accusations of dick-stepping. The quality can really only go up from there.
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Post by shakes on Oct 2, 2019 14:36:26 GMT -5
I would remove all the general chat channels and leave only 2 channels ... one for announcements or commentary BY APPROVED STAFF ... release notes, etc.
And the second one for newbie help.
General chat seems, at least in the Arm community, to be about as effective and useful as watching Mekillot shit up the "why my day sucks" threads in off-topic.
Everyone I want to talk off-topic with is already on my PM or Discord list. I don't need to see how random fuckwit #73 felt he was being body-shamed when he ordered his latte.
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Post by shakes on Oct 2, 2019 14:39:37 GMT -5
I also just don't think Discord works very well for a game discussion in a large group. Stick to the forum where people have time to formulate their thoughts better and perhaps let their better judgement override their immediate fuckwit impulses.
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faroukel
Displaced Tuluki
What's a story without a villain?
Posts: 201
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Post by faroukel on Oct 2, 2019 14:41:02 GMT -5
...but the guy said vodka-n-coffee was bad for babies, and I'm a 42 yr old man.
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