maziel
staff puppet account
Posts: 45
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Post by maziel on Mar 1, 2023 15:20:57 GMT -5
I doubt anyone here wants this or see's it that way. I think above all, the vast majority of posters here who have been here the past decade or whenever jcarter started these forums, wants one thing above all else and that's to seek the truth. I only speak for myself here but I despise liars and people who are deceptive. It's one of the few things in life that I truly hate. I hate the idea of cheating on your spouse, it disgusts me. Probably why I was banned so many times from Arm and left and returned to give it a second, third or fourth chance only to be let down by that shit I hate, people just lying, being deceptive etc. This just in: Guts says he hates Griffith.
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val
staff puppet account
Posts: 28
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Post by val on Mar 1, 2023 15:23:56 GMT -5
The argument of 'if you want to be seen as the good guys do not do X' is not a good argument. As much as I disagree with some of the language and rhetoric that some people use and will chose to remove myself from situations where people are using it, if you have to speak in the language that power understands in order to be respected by power, you're literally unable to speak truth to power. Your language is being taken.
And being the good guys will always be a moving target. The most nonviolent forms of protest are typically addressed this way by people who just want them to stop existing. "If you want to be seen as the good guys, stop being so strident. If you want people to listen to you, stop being hysterical. If you want to be seen as the good guys, stop protesting in an inconvenient place." Things like that. People who are angry are often going to speak in an angry tone, and challenging the status quo is never convenient. Whether you're the good guys or not isn't measured by the tone that is used.
I don't intend this to attack the person who offered this statement, it's just something I've thought about a lot in other contexts.
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migrant
staff puppet account
Posts: 22
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Post by migrant on Mar 1, 2023 15:42:05 GMT -5
Someone commented that framing a discussion as "you have to behave like 'the good guys' or nobody will trust you" is disingenous and a bad argument, because it's frequently used in a way to stifle those who attempt to speak truth to power. People get upset about any inconvenience in the name of protesting injustice and label those who cause inconveniences as the "bad guys". They want people to be nonviolent at times when nonviolence will just be ignored. It's a little like what BeBop did when bringing receipts outside the request tool -- because the "proper" form of reporting was being ignored, and she was pursuing actual justice. This was enlightening for me because I was thinking about what I'd written idly as one does while doing autopilot tasks and realized it was really the wrong direction. Even then, I didn't think of it the way this wise person had outlined, but reading their perspective on it made me realize that too. It's a bad point in many ways. The way that I thought of was that it's basically deceptive. It was telling people to be kind just so that other people will look at them and think "okay, they're kind". When really, the reason that people should be being kind is.... to be kind. Because I doubt many people want to be unnecessarily cruel, and what happens usually is that the discussion over being kind to fellow human beings just gets swamped with all sorts of political agendas that muddy the waters. I think I'm just overly used to appealing to others' sense of pragmatism rather than their morals. Anyway, I apologize for the derail. Edit: Sorry Val The forums glitched a little on me or something and when I went to reply it looked like you had deleted the post, so I was being weird here.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Mar 1, 2023 16:16:53 GMT -5
ALSO, HOW DO YOU FUCK UP AND LOSE DELIRIUM AND ENDER??? What kind of crazy labyrinthine series of mistakes do you have to make. Literally some of the greatest story facilitators/writers. You blew it, guys. My condolences. You tried, you tried. The negativity/toxicity was just too entrenched. I tried and it tl;dr went like this ... and thank you for the compliment We had some good times, and met some good people, and I met two of my best friends and my husband, and after almost 10 years of dating and 3 years of marriage I'm glad I broke my rule of "I will never date an armageddon player again because boy that was a disaster." Turns out there ARE good people in the community. The positive stuff just gets continually overshadowed by... well... everything else.
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Post by nottriste on Mar 1, 2023 16:29:04 GMT -5
ALSO, HOW DO YOU FUCK UP AND LOSE DELIRIUM AND ENDER??? What kind of crazy labyrinthine series of mistakes do you have to make. Literally some of the greatest story facilitators/writers. You blew it, guys. My condolences. You tried, you tried. The negativity/toxicity was just too entrenched. I tried and it tl;dr went like this ... and thank you for the compliment We had some good times, and met some good people, and I met two of my best friends and my husband, and after almost 10 years of dating and 3 years of marriage I'm glad I broke my rule of "I will never date an armageddon player again because boy that was a disaster." Turns out there ARE good people in the community. The positive stuff just gets continually overshadowed by... well... everything else. Oh my fucking god. This all day. I hopped onto the discord this week after hearing a woman had been harassed by Shalooonsh again. I was instantly accused of being triste for * gasp* the insurmountable sin of hating rapey behavior. I did a little reconnaissance and cracked a joke about how people are allowed to insult triste, staff were literally like "I don't know what you're talking about," but if you search the history of that channel, there is PLENTY showing people trash talking me/triste, like Barsook saying "triste, she's a very toxic person," and numerous other cases of stupid, judgmental, disrespectful bullshit about me. If speaking up against sexual assault makes me toxic, feel free call me toxic all day.These people are imbeciles. Sorry, insults are bad. These people are acting like imbeciles . Giving a shit about women and victims of sexual assault isn't a toxic trait. The label of "toxic" is one of the most lazy advents of our age, and 99 out of 100 times the people applying this label are the people with no integrity themselves.
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Post by eukelade on Mar 1, 2023 17:33:56 GMT -5
You tried, you tried. The negativity/toxicity was just too entrenched. it really was/is tho. I joined staff at I wanna say age 22 with high minded ideals and stars in my eyes. I had many plans to change things for the better. I think I managed a couple of good plots before I burned out, which nearly any staff with any kind of reasonable ability to perceive the humanity of the playerbase quickly did. The amount of staff members with personal vendettas against individual players just because they were annoyed about something like excessive stilt lizard sparring boggled the mind. A constant peanut gallery of nasty little comments on imm chat all day. Newly hired staff were brought into this culture and were taught to do it too, leading to a further entrenching of the us vs. them mentality which it seems has persisted to this day. The game is set up to allow skill gains from the stupid stilt lizards. It isn't the player's fault for using the systems as designed. It was deeply unprofessional and embarrassing to witness the extent of the vitriol, even for the naive person I was at the time. To this day I don't know what anyone got out of that behavior or what it accomplished other than making things worse for game culture as a whole. In actual game development, if a player finds an exploit, the reaction among devs is "well, shucks. They got us. Guess we better fix that." And then it gets fixed. The end. The "resource pc" shenanigans most staff engaged in is already well-trodden ground so I won't go over it, but it was rampant then and I guess it still is. At one point Shalooonsh had a defiler character he used to menace Allanak and Tuluk. Fine, fine, we love a villain, except players actually died to it, and it was unkillable. I took a peek at its skill list once, and it had every single skill and reach in the game. very dumb!
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Post by blahblahblah on Mar 1, 2023 18:54:46 GMT -5
You tried, you tried. The negativity/toxicity was just too entrenched. it really was/is tho. I joined staff at I wanna say age 22 with high minded ideals and stars in my eyes. I had many plans to change things for the better. I think I managed a couple of good plots before I burned out, which nearly any staff with any kind of reasonable ability to perceive the humanity of the playerbase quickly did. The amount of staff members with personal vendettas against individual players just because they were annoyed about something like excessive stilt lizard sparring boggled the mind. A constant peanut gallery of nasty little comments on imm chat all day. Newly hired staff were brought into this culture and were taught to do it too, leading to a further entrenching of the us vs. them mentality which it seems has persisted to this day. The game is set up to allow skill gains from the stupid stilt lizards. It isn't the player's fault for using the systems as designed. It was deeply unprofessional and embarrassing to witness the extent of the vitriol, even for the naive person I was at the time. To this day I don't know what anyone got out of that behavior or what it accomplished other than making things worse for game culture as a whole. In actual game development, if a player finds an exploit, the reaction among devs is "well, shucks. They got us. Guess we better fix that." And then it gets fixed. The end. The "resource pc" shenanigans most staff engaged in is already well-trodden ground so I won't go over it, but it was rampant then and I guess it still is. At one point Shalooonsh had a defiler character he used to menace Allanak and Tuluk. Fine, fine, we love a villain, except players actually died to it, and it was unkillable. I took a peek at its skill list once, and it had every single skill and reach in the game. very dumb! Mhmm. All of this. And it's not hard to just be NICE and redirect someone from doing something they "shouldn't". I once saw someone in a clan sparring a rat in the dark, and instead of chastizing the player, I hopped into the rat and tried to turn it into an RP scene. Then I had his superior come and we had an IC chat about the clan and what was going on. Instead of hopping all over a player, you try to help them out and give them better, and more accepted opportunities and methods to reach their goals. Not hard. If the behavior doesn't change after being clear about it not being good, THEN you start to penalize folks. In a fair way.
It's good to see your sparkly unicorn butt, Eukelade. I miss playing with you.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Mar 1, 2023 19:49:44 GMT -5
An animation will self police a player more than a threatening staff DM.
The player could have (I assume he didn't think it through enough to) even had a somewhat 'valid' reasoning in character. 'I want to get better at fighting the rats that hide in the dark (Rats meaning thieves), so I'm fighting rats in the dark'. It's kind funny sounding, somewhat 'sound', and still dumb enough a military or mercenary officer can be like "ha. anyway, don't do it again dumb ass this is a real organization' .
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Post by eukelade on Mar 1, 2023 20:18:26 GMT -5
I'll be yet more controversial then, and suggest that I don't think staff should bend over backwards trying to get players to stop using the code as designed. Just...leave it. Adapt. Take a deep breath and accept the reality that your game lets you train backstab on giant insects right now because that's what some 12 year old coded in 1998 and nobody has changed it yet. Trying to fight against that just leads to burnout & frustration. Even if one player is nice and listens/adjusts behavior, the rest won't. And why should they? The code literally lets them, and Armageddon is a code-based game. Players will sneak around at 4am while the majority of staff are asleep just to spam cast. I have seen y'all do it. Respectfully, you are all incorrigible.
If staff absolutely don't want it to happen they need to engineer a change and rebalance things. Trying to manipulate players into stopping is pointless and does not work, whether you do that by animating a rat or screaming at them. This is the nature of the game design beast. And I am not even being resentful or upset when I say that. It would be like being upset with gravity.
Anyway, this is way off topic now, but imo staff have pointlessly wasted a LOT of energy over the years on that kind of thing when they could have been doing other, better, more fun things for themselves and everyone else.
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maziel
staff puppet account
Posts: 45
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Post by maziel on Mar 1, 2023 20:21:45 GMT -5
An animation will self police a player more than a threatening staff DM. The player could have (I assume he didn't think it through enough to) even had a somewhat 'valid' reasoning in character. 'I want to get better at fighting the rats that hide in the dark (Rats meaning thieves), so I'm fighting rats in the dark'. It's kind funny sounding, somewhat 'sound', and still dumb enough a military or mercenary officer can be like "ha. anyway, don't do it again dumb ass this is a real organization' . Would honestly much rather fight mobs than sparr personally. Sparring is just awkward. Can be hard to find mobs around 'nak to hit without dying early on, though. Or at least it was however many years ago. Tuluk was much easier. The real issue here is that the player can't find an easy-ish non-humanoid creature to fight with using sensible IC justifications. They shouldn't always have to rely on other players or roleplaying to increase their combat skills. Personal improvement - sometimes you have to do it by yourself. One solution might be replacing rats with some entry level opponent that people could actually learn something from fighting, hunt for sport, materials, whatever. Hard to pick a valid reason for hunting rats. But I also maxed out at 1 karma and mob killed quite a bit out there by myself. If you animate to stop people unrealistically poking unowned, non-humanoid mobs, you should animate for people who spend days huge amounts of in game time mudsexing as well. It's unrealistic. __ in game mins into their session: Amos goes soft and slips out. An act of GOD.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Mar 1, 2023 20:48:58 GMT -5
I mean, I don't necessarily feel one hard way or another at stopping people from twinking up. I do it myself. I was just proposing: If I have to enforce 'Don't twink', there are better ways to do it then bring the wrath of god. "The real issue here is that the player can't find an easy-ish non-humanoid creature to fight with using sensible IC justifications. " Jokes on you I've been sparring Rinthi npcs and will till the day I die. "One solution might be replacing rats with some entry level opponent that people could actually learn something from fighting, hunt for sport, materials, whatever. Hard to pick a valid reason for hunting rats." IIRC some clans get this. Some meaning I think 1. And they suck. But yes this would be a good idea. "If you animate to stop people unrealistically poking mobs you should animate for people who spend days huge amounts of in game time mudsexing as well. It's unrealistic. " On god, sure. I find that stuff kinda funny. Someone spends a whole day fucking, neighbor bangs on the door. 'THE FUCK ARE YE DOING IN THERE?' I 100% hate the forum backstab bullshit. Forum combat advice in general. You have these players acting like they are the WORD OF GOD and how you should NEVER backstab animals EVER and the fucking game tells you you're allowed to. Also they say you can't backstab rats. I know there are some animal categories, Vestics? I don't even know what those are, that you can't get fails on...apparently. From code that's like 10+ years old. Which I actually can't confirm or deny, my master backstab city elf relied on spiders and raptors for fails. Because I'm a fucking man and daddy doesn't half ass things. Where I'm going with this: Yeah it's pretty fucked at this point. I probably could have saved it at one point but they're too dimwitted to realize it. Honestly I should have been made staff a long time ago. I should be a producer by now if they had any shred of awareness. I'm 6'0 225 lbs of pure muscle. I bench 315 for reps. I squat 400+ for reps. I can deadlift a car. I have 3 Master's degrees, I did 8 years in the Navy, visiting places like Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Dubai, Hawaii. I discovered who I am. I have an awesome family that I pour 100% of my time and effort into. I get 3 hours of free time at night to play games before my day begins anew of raising two beautiful daughters. I'm just built different I suppose. Nothing can shake my will. I would never have tolerated the absolute dumpster fire that you're seeing now. Day one I would clean house. I would hold monthly Q&A sessions ON VIDEO with voice so people can actually be heard and get a rational response. Why? Because deep down I don't give a fuck. The problem with this farcical fantasy above? I'm too good for Arm. I can't be bargained with, I can't be reasoned with. I don't feel pity. Or remorse or fear and I absolutely never stop... until you are pkilled.
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Post by jcarter on Mar 1, 2023 22:32:16 GMT -5
Not everybody reads the regular GDB beyond clan boards and an occasional thread that looks interesting, much less a second discussion board. I believe I looked over here once to read about the doxxing that didn't happen, and there was a level of vitriol involved in other threads that just didn't jive with my own experiences. There was also a lot of ableism, fatphobia, just general name-calling, trollish behavior, and other things that I don't like to be around. Why would I keep reading a forum of people who throw out a bunch of insults about people like me (fat and autistic, in specific), or trust these people that I don't know over my own experiences? Just quoting this to second it. When I first started playing Armageddon about a year ago, I totally knew about these boards and Armageddon's reputation on reddit. But I did consider that it was quite possible that a group of people had been upset about being righteously moderated, and made a secondary toxic community, and were unfairly brigading Arm whenever it came up. When I looked into it further, this view was cemented for me: many of the negative reviewers on reddit didn't seem to actually know how to play the game, and got facts wrong about how the game worked. Further, and more importantly, I lurked on these boards and studied the apparent character of discourse here. The first thing I saw when I first started was people insisting on saying "necker". They were upset that Armageddon staff banned this word due to how it was being used in a way suspiciously close to a word in real life. I saw the tone-deaf conversations here and thought "well, okay, that decides it". Every time I see the headline that denigrates "some cat lady", I think about how one of my favorite people in the whole world could be categorized as "some cat lady" by a pile of thoughtless bullies. Every time someone talks about Shaloonsh's IRL appearance in a negative way I kind of cringe about what a horrible thing that is to mention, and how completely unnecessary it is. He could be the most handsome man on earth and his behavior towards BeBop and others would still make him disgusting and wrong. I'm pointing these things out because val might not want to tell you guys to police your tone, and I'm not going to be authoritarian about it either (I have no authority) but -- if you actually want people to believe you're the "good guys", then it might be worth thinking about these things more seriously. You don't want to overmoderate members, but moderation is not the issue. You see what Armageddon does and start extrapolating rules like "moderating is bad" or "RPIs are bad" or whatever else, and it detracts from the facts -- the specific bad things that corrupt staff are doing. You can 100% have a polite, logical, and moderate community without squashing free speech. Nobody needs to type out slurs or act thoughtlessly cruel in order to make a logical point. In order to stop being corrupt, Armageddon doesn't need to suddenly let the GDB be full of rudeness and bigotry. They just have to be reasonable and transparent and moderate fairly. this board doesn't exist to be 'the good guys'. it exists for people to share their experiences, views, and shoot the shit. right, wrong, whatever. it is up to the reader to make the judgment. even ibusoe wasn't banned or moderated when it came out that his actions were universally gross and crude. my viewpoint is that no one should read things and take them as truth because a 'good guy' said it. likewise, things shouldn't be discredited because they were said by a 'bad guy'. i think arm is in the state it is in because players were too busy turning a blind eye to shitty things happening to people they didn't like. i've seen many players complain about these boards...only to come here later and post when they finally got burned. you don't have to like my tone, or other people's tone. i assume you're an adult, so go ahead and feel free to ignore me and other people on the boards you don't like. i do it plenty of times for posters here that i don't like. my tone, thoughts, and posts are on a board that you and others have no need to view or interact with if you don't want to. if you want to make a set of boards that have that a different tone, go right ahead you can even link and post about them here. in your later posts, you mention the 'shadowboards vs. arm'. there is no versus. these boards are not opposition -- it's a place for people to talk. why is having a place where people can talk on the internet negatively about something without being moderated a versus thing? it's just people posting on the internet about a free to play videogame. there's no brigading here or attacks or whatever. i don't support attacks or brigading, and it'll get stamped out if it occurs.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Mar 2, 2023 1:52:16 GMT -5
well, you finally reopened registration so I could actually join, boo. You invite a girl and then she can't sign up!
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migrant
staff puppet account
Posts: 22
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Post by migrant on Mar 2, 2023 8:43:39 GMT -5
in your later posts, you mention the 'shadowboards vs. arm'. there is no versus. these boards are not opposition -- it's a place for people to talk. why is having a place where people can talk on the internet negatively about something without being moderated a versus thing? it's just people posting on the internet about a free to play videogame. there's no brigading here or attacks or whatever. i don't support attacks or brigading, and it'll get stamped out if it occurs. This seems vaguely intellectually dishonest to me considering the context of the discussion and the name of the boards here. My response was about this situation: Person1: "I can't believe how horrible everyone is who didn't believe us and just kept playing Arm!" Person2: "Well, I looked at this site and couldn't really take anything here seriously because of general bigotry I saw all over the place." Me: "I felt the same way, and if you have a problem with people not believing you, maybe you shouldn't behave in these ways." I said multiple times that if you just don't care what people think that's fine. It's valuable to have a place on the internet where people can talk negatively about things. My opinion is that it's a lot less valuable to have a place where people can indulge in racist shitposting, but again -- if people here want to do that, it's not my circus. Just like Armageddon's not my circus.
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Post by jcarter on Mar 2, 2023 9:49:42 GMT -5
in your later posts, you mention the 'shadowboards vs. arm'. there is no versus. these boards are not opposition -- it's a place for people to talk. why is having a place where people can talk on the internet negatively about something without being moderated a versus thing? it's just people posting on the internet about a free to play videogame. there's no brigading here or attacks or whatever. i don't support attacks or brigading, and it'll get stamped out if it occurs. This seems vaguely intellectually dishonest to me considering the context of the discussion and the name of the boards here. My response was about this situation: Person1: "I can't believe how horrible everyone is who didn't believe us and just kept playing Arm!" Person2: "Well, I looked at this site and couldn't really take anything here seriously because of general bigotry I saw all over the place." Me: "I felt the same way, and if you have a problem with people not believing you, maybe you shouldn't behave in these ways." I said multiple times that if you just don't care what people think that's fine. It's valuable to have a place on the internet where people can talk negatively about things. My opinion is that it's a lot less valuable to have a place where people can indulge in racist shitposting, but again -- if people here want to do that, it's not my circus. Just like Armageddon's not my circus. The name of the boards is Armageddon mud discussion board. The word official was added for two days. People discuss Armageddon mud here. You're accusing me of being intellectually dishonest and then setting up a strawman where you lump every single poster and story into one being. There are legitimate stories posted here by people who haven't engaged in the behavior you described. Stating that people who have views you find abhorrent exist here and post them somehow takes away from other people's posts has more to do with your own inability to separate people and can be levied at any forum. It's a cop out to avoid facing that you were comfortable having your head in the sand. Is anyone really supposed to believe that you would have taken the dozens of posts over decades and multiple forums about staff abuse seriously if several posters that were completely unrelated hadn't made veiled racist jokes five years ago which originated from the game you played?
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