vex
Clueless newb
Posts: 133
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Post by vex on Jan 7, 2020 3:01:02 GMT -5
Really, I'm struggling to come up with a pc, I want to stick with for longer than a few weeks.
There is nothing wrong with them. They're good, usually with good stats, and have a good concept. I like the prospects of where I plan to take them, and I'm careful not to aim for things wherein I'll be required to depend upon, or even really include staff, in executing. It all makes sense, and should be good, yes? But it takes so much time, for a pc to become skilled enough, where these kinds of intentions won't lead to an immediate, and completely uncompromising death at the hands of really bored people who play for Allanak, before it can really develop into... anything.
I work very hard, and a lot of long hours, to be successful IRL. But I have a nice car, an incredible motorcycle, a rather lavish home and fashionable clothing. I'm planning to buy a boat, in the coming summer, simply because fucking on the deck of a ship I own? Sounds like it'd be a good time. Just call me Captain, sweetie.
If I were to invest those same hours into the game, I would have... a lot of master skills that don't matter much, and advanced slashing? And that is assuming, I don't slip up, and let my OFF out perform my other skills. If that happens, I might as well retire the pc, as it's no longer worth the effort. Better to start over with a pc, that has a chance of being relevant.
And when I lose it, trying to rp out a scene with a group of five pcs, who want to INSTANTLY jump to coded combat, to maximize their advantage? I have nothing to show for my time investment, save for the rather bitter aftertaste of disappointment. Or I end up retiring it, like I have with almost all my pcs, because they end up living TOO long, which is somehow, even worse.
I do enjoy the game, when I can get into it. It still presents a lot of opportunity, but more and more, it seemed gated behind a grind requirement. I'm having a hard time mustering the interest, to push through that grind, to get to a point, where I can actually have a shot at relevance. I find myself less and less interested in taking the risk of hanging out with other pcs, and simply sticking to being my own best friend, out there in the wastes.
It shouldn't take that long, or require so much hoop jumping. It shouldn't be that hard, for something with so little to offer in return.
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Post by shakes on Jan 7, 2020 7:08:08 GMT -5
Summed up nicely. I just keep coming back to the same problems.
I'm either going to grind up solo somewhere and be irrelevant in the world, max twinked, long lived, and bored to deaths.
Or I'm going to do something fun an then be murdered by someone who will completely ignore the rules, game world, the story, and face zero repercussions for it just as soon as I start getting into it.
Not to mention how I tend to be my own worst enemy in this game. "Here, allow me to let you survive this error you've made and give you a second chance." Then they jump up, run off, and recruit 5 people they've known OOC since 2002 and suddenly you've got a max-twinked death squad stalking you.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,699
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Post by mehtastic on Jan 7, 2020 8:31:30 GMT -5
Is there any way that people here think player culture should change, that would result in better player retention? And is there anything staff should do to help facilitate that change in player culture?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2020 9:13:46 GMT -5
I dont want the playerbase to be less gritty. While that would improve player retention, it would also turn the game into something I wouldn't want playing.
I guess the secrecy is a big thing. So many people fear interference, they keep their machinations secret. And while this does make sense, it does make so many things that are going on extremely under wraps. It's hard for newly created characters to get into it. And it prevents the experience of ongoing stories. When plots beginning, journey, and end are all known to some very select few.
This also touches on control. When another person has goals and style of their own that is not identical to yours. There is a temptation to remove the disharmony by murder. Again, while it makes sense in a world where life is cheap and ambition is everything, on an ooc stand point, it is ruinous to people's enjoyment. Those want to add their own voice to the chorus of gameplay. Don't be afraid to not be totally in control of the people working with you. The hassles that this brings only enhances the story.
Quasi cliqueness. I mean there are real RL cliques, but there is also a form of elitism. Certain players are really really good at stuff and those players get recognized very easily by their gameplay. So others don't mind involving "them" in their plots, but are leery about others.
You can't really blame them for it. But it does make a percentage of players remain on the outskirts.
The notion that staff are out to get you. When even a tiniest of staff attention is immediately taken with hostility. Make a gimpka rat twitch it's nose, the hunter logs off. Approach with an issue and it's immediately taken as a direct attack. This tends to make staff avoid touching those players until they do something that demands a world response. When it must happen whether the player wants it, or not. Which usually means a negative something. So the person who is already hostile to anything staff related, gets that view point reinforced, because once again they get a negative animation.
While it's true, that often enough people who are hostile have a reason to. They have been talked down to, or whatever other unreasonable shit happened. Often that was years ago. But that negativity maelstorm alignes people who never had 'any' interaction at all.
I've known players who completely blew up on staff. And then they gave me a copy of the exchange and I'm completely wtfed. I mean there was "nothing" worth blowing up over. Often the players themselves can't even explain why they had such a reaction.
Yet there are other players who keep their cool. No, they are not sucking up. They simply don't start foaming at the mouth at the mere hint of staff daring to look at them critically. Those players seem to get their animations and interactions plenty, so they get branded staff pets. While in reality, they merely do not go out of their way to be abrasive
You can say that staff are abrasive as well. And you'd be right. That's why Nessalin mostly stays out of issues that do not require producer level attention. Go ahead and try to engage him in a conversation outside of a request tool.
Staff can be abrasive as well. But they have been focusing pretty intently to smoothen that and note that there is a percentage of the playerbase that never seem to have a problem. You call them staff pets, while in reality, they are just normal people that don't seem to participate in the escalating hate mongering.
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najdorf
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 265 
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Post by najdorf on Jan 7, 2020 12:49:49 GMT -5
What business are you in vex?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2020 13:15:05 GMT -5
Grind requirement is a big thing.
When people could afford to spend 10hrs grinding to get somewhere, it worked out. But now that we are all aged, with jobs and children, a 10 hour grind is an equavelent of 2 weeks gameplay. Losing characters frivolously hurts.
New subguilds higher limits has been an attempt to improve the situation. I don't know if they are enough
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Post by anaiahlation on Jan 7, 2020 19:03:33 GMT -5
The more practical solution I would think, would be simply to invert the equation so that success raised the skill rather than failure, at it's simplest. If one wishes to further complicate or alter it, the skillgain could be on an adjusted curve the same as weapons skills only raise part of a point rather than a whole point now, and knowing that getting better would lead to more successes, it would be much easier to gate weapons skill progression at something slow on a desired curve but without the plateau that pushes people to do insane and twinkish things. Then you would see a curve where skills started slow in being learned, you learned a lot at late apprentice and early journeyman, and then progression slowed again.
/2sid
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,699
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Post by mehtastic on Jan 7, 2020 20:07:48 GMT -5
I think the most basic thing staff can do to rebuild trust within the playerbase is to sincerely acknowledge that its members have made mistakes or have been outright hostile to players in the past, and to vow to do better going forward. There is a lack of trust staffside that many players are even capable of doing the right thing, so it's not surprising that players in turn do not trust staff whenever they recognize a world echo or NPC animation, considering such events have been used to harass players. There is no cost to writing up a sincere apology that guarantees that staff members won't harass players or treat them unfairly in the future. You would see the player-staff divide mended quite quickly. The barrier to staff apologizing in this manner is that some of the staff members responsible for abusing players are still on the staff team. I don't think that people like Nessalin or Shalooonsh would appreciate such an apology being issued since every staff member would have to be on board for the apology to be genuine.
I agree that players need to loosen up and involve strangers' PCs in plots more often instead of restricting things to the players they know. That would help significantly with new player retention.
"Hate mongering", as far as I'm concerned, is a myth that has no correlation to player numbers. If anyone can prove using data that shadowboard activity and game activity are correlated in some way that would be amazing. I believe I've already sufficiently shown that negative reviews and posts on Reddit/TMC have widely varying effects on the playerbase.
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Post by lechuck on Jan 8, 2020 6:10:30 GMT -5
I agree that players need to loosen up and involve strangers' PCs in plots more often instead of restricting things to the players they know. That would help significantly with new player retention. I wouldn't expect people to do that until the game has an actual story again. When players open up their plots to others, they get PKed. There's almost no exception to that. There's so little going on that any trace of plot is pounced upon by everyone, and people have these long-lived, powerful characters that they're itching to put to use in any way. That invariably turns into a case of coming up with reasons to kill. There's just not much else to aspire for. Every little piece of intrigue becomes the biggest thing happening lately, so it gets crushed under the weight of plot-starved players with no other outlet for their power. The cliquishness of plots is a consequence of the game's lack of progress and overarching story. I can't even remember the last time I was witness to a plot that didn't end with the central character(s) getting murdered before the thing really had a chance to play out. While murder is an expected feature of the game, it's not interesting when it's so often the first resort. Templar executions fall under that umbrella, and in recent years I've seen far too few cases of templars trying other methods first. It's just the tired old arrest+execute, over and done with in ten minutes. In the absence of a story to participate in, people become trigger-happy, and there's no reason to be responsible and conscientious about it because victim's death probably didn't throw a spanner in the works of any staff endeavors. I use the word 'plot' pretty loosely as I haven't actually seen what I would call a genuine, worthwhile plot in years. It's all just "this dude stole that dude's key" or "this dude chose to work with those dude instead of us." It's been a long time since I caught wind of the types of plots that would make for good literature, because that tends to revolve around an actual story that lends weight and purpose to player actions. Without that, it's just a bunch of petty bullshit that leads nowhere and would interest nobody if there was anything else going on. If Armageddon was a TV show, the last few seasons would be unwatchable garbage where nothing matters and nobody moves forward, just a revolving door of forgettable characters dying. |
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Post by Azerbanjani on Jan 8, 2020 8:12:10 GMT -5
At the end of the day plots come from two sources and both suck.
1: Staff. They have actual coded power to manipulate the world.
2: Players. They lack any ability to effect the coded world beyond the bare basics. Even Templars and Nobles are extremely limited code wise to actually changing anything. Even if you have the highest expectation of actual change in the world and are Tektolnes himself the minute you walk up to a door thats locked you are completely limited to staffs ability to open it (The door is an example, replace it with any simple code problem. A Gate that has no lock and there isn't proper 'unlock the gate' yell command)
So if you rely on 1 you are already relying on someone elses expectations and bias against you, anyone in that plot, that part of the entire gaming world, etc. If your clan staffer/Rinthi staff sucks this year? Well congrats you're plans are fucked. You have to rely on staff wanting to give 'realistic responses'. If you want to go hunt a silt horror have fun planning via the slow ass request tool for 2 weeks in advance, losing two members of your clan due to their dumb asses in this time, only to go hunt for the thing and have literally nothing happen because it's realism.
Or perhaps your staffer really likes you, and you get a lot of benefits. But you clash heads one day and they become rude to you, or the staffer has a random bias to a certain idea you have an won't budge on it at all. Or your staffer moves or there is a change and you go from having meetings with your staffer over discord and having all your plot ideas read to having a staffer who demands weekly updates but only responds to them every 2 months.
Don't worry, they post on every update you do but only with accusatory questions that don't actually have feedback or matter. "Why did you talk to 'so and so clan'?!?!? Shouldn't you be enemies?!?!?!" (Yet you've been friends and allies for years, and then they don't even reply to your answer)
So 1 kinda sucks.
2 Sucks more.
Getting players together for any plot basically has to have the assumption that staff will get involved. How many people would hear someone talk about a 'heist' plot and really go along for the ride thinking they'd do it without staff? It literally can not happen. You can have every PC in the game show up to the bank and not a single fucking command they throw into this game will get them money.
I had a character who was going to worship an Ankheg for funsies, because at this point I recognized there's no reason to really try and go out of my way to do certain things. Might as well self rp/do things within my ability of things.
The only things players can do to enforce or 'get responses' to their plots that does not revolve around staff is:
1: Try and diplomacy with these brain dead idiots who think the ideal soldier cuts off someones fingers and laughs maniacally because they can get away with not having a soul in this game.
2: Maim them and get ganked
3: Kill them and get ganked but it takes longer to get ganked because if they are obvious staff might get mad.
(You aren't going to get ganked every time so for the people typing the 'WELLUMIKILLEDTHISONEPERSONANDDIDN'TGETGANKED' You can go have a great new year and I respect you but I don't respect your response)
So really, why join a player plot? Are you going to be the person in the gang that does tries diplomacy with dumb asses? Are you going to be the PK engine? Are you going to farm money for them with the worse and worse economy system so they can spend nothing on their coin because apparently these senior npcs staff animate don't want 30k?
I'm also going to clarify right here that I'm not like, 'butt mad' about anything. Any example I give isn't some real example I went through, some I heard off hand, but are just examples. For example, I'm not ass mad about soldiers Rn. My last character was a tribal so I didn't even interact with them.
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