Yup, high teens and low twenties seem like the new normal for player numbers. It'll tend to peak around ~30 for an hour or so, a few days of the week. And then you'll get one or two days, if you're lucky, where the numbers might hit the high thirties or forties for an hour. You might as well be playing Harshlands or Haven at this point. Though I would go out on a limb and say that the player numbers for most RPIs are lower than they were ~5 years ago. It's a pretty big issue in a game like Armageddon because it only takes a few days to become familiar with 80% of active characters. Imagine dying, rolling up, and playing with by-and-large the same people you've played with for the past few characters.
It's especially sad and disappointing because the reigning tripartite (Shalooonsh, Shabago, Brokkr) seemed genuinely interested in the game. Despite being perhaps the most dishonest, abusive and manipulative group of staff friends to ever rule over Armageddon, it felt like they were eager to make changes. You got the new class system (meh), Shalooonsh opened up Tuluk, and Shabago made himself the fourth Producer, head of player-staff relations, despite being one of the most unlikeable and disagreeable turds around. With the reopening of Tuluk, a slight resurgence in ongoing plots, and even a promotion of player-created clans in places like Allanak, you'd imagine at least
a few players may have been interested in returning. But it seems like even more players have left.
My theories on why this is happening:
1. Record Low Trust In StaffTurns out flipping the switch and pretending to be decent people, while refusing to address the dozens of accusations against you, isn't a respectable stance. Shalooonsh, Shabago and Brokkr all have a dirty history of abusing power - pretty much in that order. I could write an encyclopedia of claims against these guys, but to keep it short, we're talking about people that repeatedly played together and cheated together whilst on staff, on their staff avatars and hogged limited magick/psionic roles, colluded, so on and so forth. Throw in an open disdain for players, often treating them like children or ruining their experience to improve that of a staff pet or further a staff plot, and you've got an openly shitty combo.
They haven't given old players a reason to return and they still arbitrarily refuse to just be open and frank with the playerbase. The ability to be a genuine human being must be a disqualification for current staff team applicants. If they did a 180 with current Armageddon staff team culture and eliminated the engrained clique culture and discord bantz supremacy, communicated effectively with every player, and made efforts to improve the average player's experience in-game, they'd already be so much farther along in bringing Armageddon back from the brink.
What do the Three Stooges (SSB) also have in common? Well, they all have play-to-win mentalities. This is OKAY for a player to have. When you're playing a staff avatar? Pretty terrible and clearly led to cheating and abuse. And as a staffer in general, someone who's trying to run plots and facilitate the playerbase? Arguably one of the worst traits to have. The plotlines that these guys run really aren't that fun. When Shalooonsh was the new kid on the staff team, the underdog, he became popular with his players while overseeing the Red Fangs. Why? He cared about and helped out every character in his clan. He tried his best to help them with their goals, ran plots for them, built them items. He let them
win. Nowadays, they've lost sight of that. It's a harsh world after all. They'd rather derail the player experience than see PCs become wildly successful. Most plotlines have to go staff's way. Characters can't succeed in a way that sets them apart. Nothing magnificent happens. All is well in a stagnant, mundane world.
I don't want to go too far into this next topic, because it's been what... 15+ years? But obviously Halaster returning to the staff team and taking on such a major role (head of the Southlands) is a red flag. The dude was an overlord back in the day. One of the most infamous staff cheaters in the game's history. The Plainsman was his avatar, and he was unstoppable. He built a massive, magickal fortress in the damn Grey Forest for his own character and his friends. And he got away with it, because it was
cool and he made the game more interesting. Honestly, since he took over the Southlands and Shabago fucked off to his Producer role, I haven't heard nearly as many horror stories coming out of player experiences in Allanak. It seems like if you're playing right now, Allanak is the place to be. Players are getting some of the most support. For that reason, that's all I'll say on modern Halaster, because I honestly don't know enough about his current role in Armageddon and just how much control he's exerting. He's the coolest cheater of them all. The Chad Cheater (Halaster) vs. the Beta Cheaters (Shalooonsh, Shabago, Brokkr).
2. Refusal To InnovateArmageddon's gameplay loop remains the exact same, while the amount of power that you can obtain has steadily decreased. Themepark hack-n-slash desert mudsex game with a stagnating playerbase, where half of active characters are likely played by staff or better yet, GDB toe lickers with 5000 posts who enjoy posting cats on the discord while they're at their soul crushing office job. Bonus points if they're triste (rare pokemon) and complain about the lack of non-hetero npcs or their non-binary PCs having worse stat rolls. The core gameplay of Armageddon has been the same for like 25 years and things won't really change until they revamp it.
You've got the classic Byn experience where your Sergeant flirts with your clients while you get a subpar grind with GDB superstars who still don't know how to raise their weapon skills, people who don't understand how to use punctuation, and people who hate you if you don't play patty cake and braid hair at the workbench with them. You get to have a round with the high strength dwarf who doesn't dodge a single swing while the First Trooper panders to the half-giant because the clan needs a meatshield for the next contract. I can't be the only player who has only made it to Trooper like once in 8+ years because the Byn is such a brain numbing, soul crushing experience. Enjoy eventually losing your character to spiders, gith, a met or staff npcs/animations. Shoot, or those nasty 90+ dmg arrows.
You've got the military clans, the AoD or Legions. These clans pretty much exist solely to serve the Templars and staff plots. You get to walk around your respective city-state while being treated like a King, but really you're a glorified squire carrying around daddy/mommy Templar's sword. They finally have access to NPC sparring dummies, which I've been suggesting for years. That's a great addition. Too bad they're loss on such limited, singular purpose clans.
You've got the Great Merchant Houses, which are soulless husks with Merchants and Agents that uniformly don't even play the fucking game. If you play for more than an hour a day, or a few days a week, you'd be the most active GMH leader around. Of course they're limited to relatively minor roles where NPC Agents/Overseers can be animated at will to tell you that you're a fuckboy and that nothing that you do matters. Ah yes, the monolithic virtual power monopoly of the upper nobility/GMHs that serves no purpose other than to fuck players, lower the glass ceiling and ensure that staff always have the ultimate, final say. What a wonderful addition to a cooperative roleplaying game. At least you get to hire two hunters per house so they can uh... skin stuff for you.
What am I missing? Allanaki and Tuluki nobility that barely play the game? Templars that barely play, or end up getting stored/killed for disagreeing with staff? Independent merchants that play the game for 3 RL years so that they can own a single room warehouse, sell cures or ale, and have no real influence in the virtual sphere. Woo, that really incentivizes people to invest time into your game. Simply put, the game doesn't stand much of a chance to improve while these terrible game design choices remain at the forefront of the Armageddon experience. They wouldn't be that hard to fix. Make the world more chaotic, make the virtual NPC forces less powerful, give PCs more power. Boom. And for god's sake, can't you find a better antagonist than insane defiler-worshipping cannibals and gith?
3. Lack Of Smart ConsolidationThey closed down Tuluk in a shitty way, and they reopened Tuluk in a shitty way. It has always been a bizarre city that never felt very true to Zalanthas, but they've managed to make it even less conductive to the setting. Staff have cited 'consolidation' and the reopening of Tuluk as a reason for the lack of player housing in Luir's Outpost. That sucks. Only a very specific type of character can play in current Tuluk. They hate outsiders. Even if you could play in Tuluk... why would you? It feels like a literal graveyard and it's the lovebaby of Shalooonsh. No wonder why there are barely any females playing there. It's just a crappy, uninteresting place where 90% of it is gated off to non-citizens and if you go in there without ink, the militia will immediately be sniffing your asshole because they're so starved for interaction.
Armageddon staff just aren't good at consolidation. They only know how to arbitrarily remove and gate content from players. They love to destroy and remain barely capable of creating. If you want people to play in Tuluk, you've gotta give them a reason to. An earth shattering revelation, I know. It's similar to when Tuluk closed, barely anyone went to play in Allanak because it was a boring hellhole populated by some of the worst Templar characters as sponsored by the lovely Shabago. Bring life, growth and potential to an area and the players will follow. I think that's why Allanak is the more populated play area currently. The players aren't being strangled, and that's better than the alternative.
But new content that would give people a genuine reason to be excited doesn't seem to be there, hence the lack of player retention or any signs of growth. Maybe it has to do with the relative age of the staff team. Aren't most of these guys in their 40s or 50s at this point? They aren't innovators. Most of them probably love the game, but they don't want to change it, and they certainly aren't at the stage in their life where they can devote serious time into seeing it grow or flourish. I think that's a common excuse for the low player numbers. "The playerbase is aging, people have jobs and families." That's true. But I think it applies most accurately to the staff team. They're the oldbies with a lack of time, energy and excitement to invest in the game. You can always attract more players. Younger, excited players. They don't really care to. "Low player numbers because summer starts in uh 3 months!!" "Low player numbers because Putin took our best Bynners as prisoners of war in Ukraine!!" Yeah, okay.
Anyway, that's my piece.
