mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 20, 2023 11:54:17 GMT -5
The relevant part is below:
My commentary:With a few exceptions, the replies are the usual nodding along you see from the usual enablers of staff abuse, with only a few noteworthy posts pushing back. Rules don't stop staff abuse on their own. Vigilance and actually paying attention to the people you work with to help run the game stops staff abuse. Plenty of rules were already in place to stop Shalooonsh's abuse, but their lack of enforcement combined with a general indifference from staff is what allowed his abuse to have an effect in the first place. Since no one stood up and said, "Hey, what Shalooonsh is doing is wrong!", he was allowed to commit his abusive acts, pretend to have voluntarily resigned, and have people like Brokkr and Shabago launder his reputation in the eyes of the community. The additional rules just made it clear that staff's official position on what Shalooonsh did was that it was ultimately unacceptable, despite all of the effort made to pretend otherwise until public pressure became too much to bear. By rolling the rules back, they are effectively stating that what happened was entirely avoidable without the rules. Which is true! It was entirely avoidable without the rules. The staff were just way too feckless to prevent it. As Malken puts it, this is effectively a decision that is going to be made. Halaster is making a show of approaching players for feedback, and outside of a few minor tweaks, the rules are going to be rescinded. The fact that they had the gall to post it in the first place shows commitment to the idea, and Usiku's whining about not being able to play their PC much in the past 6 months tells you that at least 2/3 Producers want this change to happen. Brokkr's history with his own sorcerer, Silteyes, and his blending of staff-learned and player-learned info, effectively makes it 3/3. This post isn't designed to get player feedback, it's to test the waters and figure out how many players are going to be pissed off when they force the change through. The answer is: not many! And what's going to happen? If the rules don't really matter, and staff caring or not caring does, the rollback of the rules suggests that staff care less. As CirclelessBard implied, what's going to happen is that when the current, apparently well-enough-behaved staff leave the game and are replaced with new staff members, those staff will be beholden to fewer rules and expectations in their roles. In other words, with these rules gone and the staff giving less of a shit about their own conduct, the next Shalooonsh is an inevitability. It's just a matter of when. So, staff are blowing smoke up the playerbase's asses. They pretended for a little while that they care about the integrity of the staff team and the game. Now that things have calmed down, and there is less pressure on the staff, they don't even see the need to pretend anymore. As usual, the most prominent members of the playerbase like mansa and Lizzie embarrass themselves and the community they care about so much by enabling this exact behavior. Also, it's pretty obvious that once these rules roll back, there is going to be a poorly-played psionicist in the game that just happens to know exactly what to do to avoid suspicion at all times, a la Nyr's Tuluki bard psionicist from the early 2010s that somehow evaded the Faithful for years, despite existing in the same era as Zeqoriya, the most twinky of all Lirathans. So have fun with repeating that chunk of history, you guys. TL;DR: Staff are inattentive and poor historians, and the players that enable their shenanigans are complete shitheads.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 20, 2023 12:11:05 GMT -5
P.S.: If you're a Storyteller watching all of this unfold and you're scratching your head wondering why it looks like Administrators and Producers will get to play the game and be logged into their staff account at the same time, while Storytellers will still be barred from doing so, hit me up. I love insider info and your anonymity will be protected.
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pinkerdlu
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Post by pinkerdlu on Oct 20, 2023 13:31:29 GMT -5
Yeah, good post. You're right in that the decision has already been made and they're just feeling out the playerbase's reaction.
Two rules that have a history of being broken and abused by staff. The staff need more powerful roles to play, while logged into their staff accounts, and staff need to keep coding magick spells for the roles that they and their buddies are playing... while approving "player driven" efforts to introduce new poisons and other inane shit to the game. Like what? How is that acceptable if you care about the game or wanted something better for it after SS (Shal and Shab) left?
All while the game dwindles down to 30 player peaks, but averages like 5 players in any given sphere. The quality of the playerbase has absolutely deteriorated. I don't say that to be mean, but it's sadly and visibly true. I'm hearing the "norm" now is for a variety of sponsored roles (Merchants, Templars, Sergeants, etc.) to be barely capable of emotes or punctuation. We don't even have "good" staff pets these days. I don't see the same level of roleplay that existed just a few years ago, and even that left a lot wanting. Any authenticity or passion is gone. There are some cool cats still out there, but ya'll are in a losing fight.
I doubt that there is anything to be done at this point besides watch it play out, like we did before with Nyr, Nergal, Nessalin, Shalooonsh and Shabago. Raising your voice only goes as far as there are people to listen. And even then people were only willing to react to what constituted sexual harassment, stalking and abuse. The current issue is a lack of decisive action and change. I hope they prove me wrong, because I don't think a reaction is possible.
At this point, it's infinitely more productive to work on our own projects. But you know how that goes.
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punished ppurg
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Post by punished ppurg on Oct 20, 2023 23:02:37 GMT -5
Arc question: what happened to the esprit de corps of Armageddon?
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 21, 2023 6:56:50 GMT -5
There was once a point where people had a common sense of loyalty to the game. Throughout the MUD community, it was respected as a space to tell stories collaboratively, where players and staff worked together to make really cool things happen. Things like the Allanaki occupation of Tuluk and the Copper War were not just cool things that happened in the game, they were spaces where players showed restraint in their play, preferring stories to be roleplayed rather than throwing everything to dice rolls and seeing who gets to -10 HP first. In this sense, Armageddon as a community had a sort of communal vibe to it. The first cracks in that vibe began to show with player gatherings. People were naturally excluded from in-person meetups because of their location in the world or a simple desire to maintain internet anonymity (not meeting with strangers was a pretty big Internet Rule back in the day). The people that did go to these meetings forged friendships that persisted as long as these players continued to play Armageddon. However, people also used these meetings to advance their own interests. The line between an innocent friendship and "networking" was blurred. Most people wanted to share stories and have fun, and some people wanted to OOCly set up magicker cabals and the like. That is setting aside the predatory nature of a few of the attendees. Then I think at some point, the staff began to deliberately foster cracks and divides in the community. Nessalin was really big on pulling up two people he suspected of colluding OOCly, and telling them each separately that the other had ratted them out, just to see what would happen. Staff began to drill it into players' heads that staff don't ruin plots, other players do. The commonly-shared story about the Nilazi being given away via OOC communication was the biggest example of this. Arguments about roleplaying were allowed in the community as long as players blamed each other for bad RP and didn't turn their attention to the staff. This culminated in things like "The Great Karma-Off" where players blamed themselves for the overpresence of magickers in the game, instead of the staff's poor game design abilities, and publicly asked for their own karma to be removed - then privately asked for it to be restored again weeks or months later, without other players' knowledge. The staff granted both types of requests, knowing that divides would deepen because of the sheer duplicity of individual players. As the community became more individualistic, you start to see that the game design shifted to follow that trend. The class changes are the most notable example of this, enabling solo play more and more and letting PCs avoid each other if their players wanted. As players lost trust in the ability of other players to roleplay and be honest contributors to a collaborative story, they pulled away from each other. The ultimate show of sheer callousness for other players came with the closure of Tuluk, where what I can only describe as "OOC Allanaki nationalism" flared up and people started to rub Tuluk's closure in other people's faces, driving away a huge chunk of the playerbase that still actually cared about collaborative storytelling. But there's plenty of examples of players calling out specific or vague groups of players for roleplay they don't like. And this was allowed as long as you didn't attack staff. These discussions harmed the game's spirit and were allowed because of a sheer lack of interest in moderation staff-side. The players were like students having a school yard fight, and the staff were like the disinterested teacher who doesn't get paid enough to break it up. Of course, the shadowboard is not mystically above it all somehow. This place allowed people to speak freely about the game's actual ills, and discussions here have largely been focused on just how bad staff members really are, as did general MUD communities like Mud Connector forums and Reddit. But it also allowed "The Qwerty", whose name I invoke not to single out an individual, but an archetype of posters whose entire purpose was to blame other players for the game's ills, and redirect the rage at staff mismanagement to other players, blaming complainants for not enjoying the game. Fortunately, they were usually so stupid and deranged that only they believed their own bullshit. But their behavior was severely against the game's shared interest. Because they were the loudest voices in non-Armageddon MUD communities, and existed solely to make it aggravating to criticize staff, non-Armageddon players understandably believed that everyone at Armageddon was The Qwerty: unpleasant at best, rabid at worst. Armageddon players generally (rightly) viewed The Qwerties as the worst examples of an Armageddon player, and although their identities were easy to determine, staff never told them to stop because The Qwerties were useful idiots that continued the trend of allowing players to fight each other so that they are too weak to fight back against abusive staff.
You start to see some efforts to restore the community's shared sense of loyalty to the game, with varying degrees of misguidedness, over the years. The most recent efforts are things like the player committee and player moderation are efforts to get players involved in community self-management, instead of relying on staff to completely police every aspect of the game. Further back, you have Nergal's attempts to start up the Discord community and close down Random Armageddon Thoughts (a 200+ page thread where players mostly took potshots at each other), which was supposed to get players to stop attacking each other and be nicer, but it was misguided because you can't force mean people to be nice. And what was left of the community at that point was mostly mean people, who were mistrusting of each other thanks to years of being told by staff and each other that they suck and are ruining the game. As the community continues to dwindle, the remaining hangers-on from the olden days are the people who fell upward by simply being patient. They are also the people who have gone through the Ludovico Technique of being forced to see why their fellow players are dumb and bad, and have themselves become dumb and bad as a defense mechanism to ensure their player character doesn't die. The rest of the players are newbies who, frankly, are the better roleplayers this game has. But they come and go because the promise of the game as a collaborative storytelling experience died in the cradle, leaving behind a community that is about as loyal to itself as a bunch of murderous old men in a tontine.
All of this leads to the majority of players willingly letting staff take more power for themselves because it is better than letting players have it, because players might be bad with it, but staff might be good with it.
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Post by uncoolio on Oct 21, 2023 7:30:35 GMT -5
I think admins should be allowed to play one psionicist for each noteworthy plotline they orchestrate beforehand. It has to be open to - and able to be meaningfully affected by - ordinary character concepts like soldiers, Bynners, d-elves or other such demographics. Pick one general area of the game and make something happen there that actually matters to everyone who plays in that region, and is worth engaging with. Do that and you get to play one psionicist. If that character dies, you have to run another such storyline before you're allowed to roll up a new one. As a result of this, we would see one of two things: 1) A sudden resurgence of meaningful things happening in Zalanthas, making the game feel less dead 2) Admins going "ah, you know, I didn't really want to play a psionicist that badly after all"
Either one would be healthy for the game.
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Post by uncoolio on Oct 21, 2023 8:19:04 GMT -5
I have to point out that this is not quite how it went down. It wasn't players blaming themselves, as such. In fact, I started the thread that led to the Karma-Off. This is how it went: Back when Arm Reborn was still believed to be a thing, staff indiscriminately approved any and all special applications, no matter who by or how far above their karma level it was. I recall that someone who had played for about a year was approved for a psionicist, for example. As a result, easily half of the playerbase was playing some sort of non-mundane character. Magick was a daily sight anywhere, and it was not at all unusual to witness people being Hands-of-Winded off of barstools in the taverns of Allanak. The world had erupted into a ludicrous bonanza of magick.
It was essentially impossible to set foot outside a city without running into one or more mages, and even if you stayed inside the city, you would still be exposed to it regularly. This was the era of the Council of Allanaki Mages as well as the Gin+Quick crew of the Guild which comprised no less than three mindbenders and an immortal demon nilazi, as well as whatever random mages they had press-ganged. Suffice to say that magick was everywhere.
As a natural consequence of that, players grew desensitized to it. Since their characters had witnessed magick on a literal daily basis for a long time, they began to oppose it and simply shun, hunt or otherwise discriminate against magickers in a manner that didn't conform to the documented instructions of quavering with gormless fear and basically acting like the innkeep in Bree when the black riders came through. Then there was a staff announcement. Can't remember who by, but it went something like this: "Players have begun to exhibit less fear and superstition towards magick. We would like to remind you that your characters should react as if magick is a rare, mindblowing event, and you must contract PTSD the first time you see the slightest sign of it." (okay, I paraphrased that a bit, but that was the general message) I then made a thread in general discussion that went something like this: "If you wanted us to treat magick as some rare and horrifying occurrence, you should not have allowed the game to slip into a state where it's something characters witness constantly and are forced to confront in the only manner they can." People then chimed in with general agreement, and then someone - I actually think it was Mansa who, although I don't like him at all, was right at least this once - said that he would give up all his karma in protest of the way the game had drifted into an orgy of magick bullshittery. Then a bunch of others were like, me too! Staff acknowledged the protest and agreed to the karma deduction, saying that it could be reinstated anytime at the player's request. Then as it became increasingly clear that Arm Reborn was not happening, staff stopped letting everyone and their retarded dog spec-app whatever they wanted. Things returned to relative normalcy and players decided to cease the protest and ask for their karma back.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 21, 2023 11:34:00 GMT -5
The staff definitely knew at the time what the end result would be and from the beginning, it was heavily mocked by staff and some high-karma players as an absurd effort that no player would reasonably hold up to for a significant length of time. This showed that players mistrusted other players with power vested in them by the game and its staff and there was never a reckoning for the staff that allowed the flood of non-mundane roles in the first place, beyond that outburst of disapproval. The end result is twofold: the players resumed playing high-karma roles as soon as they possibly could, which led to another surge in magickal roles right after the Karma-Off that subsided. The long-term result has been that players never banded together in that show of disapproval ever again until the Shaloooonsh sex abuse incident earlier this year, despite there being quite a lot to disapprove of over the years. I think you are right that Mansa started the Karma-Off, but the fact that all these years later he is an ineffective toadie for the staff and everything they want to do I think shows what I mean. The game took the fight out of the players, and prioritized internal bickering between players instead of actual thorough critique of staff.
Which is why now when staff ask for "input" on the game, there are the usual goons stepping up to tone-police people who are aggravated, like whengravityfalls weighing in on the thread to just say "Patuk bad" instead of literally anything useful. And two years later when Shalooonsh is just a joke in the community like Nyr or Nergal, the players endowed with the memory of a goldfish will wonder why there aren't rules preventing staff from logging into their mortal account and so on.
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delirium
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Post by delirium on Oct 21, 2023 15:07:01 GMT -5
Whenever I'm reminded of this game and check in on it, my gut reaction is 'wow, I'm glad this isn't something I spend emotional or mental labor on any longer.'
That probably speaks for itself.
I am sad for those who are still throwing their time and creativity into that ungrateful black hole. "I can fix it!" You can't, boo. But I've been there.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 21, 2023 15:21:44 GMT -5
The light of the dumpster fire is just too attractive not to look at. I simultaneously pity and am thankful for the last hangers-on to Armageddon because at this point, it's a fascinating psychological experiment to sit and watch. The players right now have more power than ever over the staff (which isn't saying much, to be fair), and they do worse than nothing with it. They are eager to hand it back, give staff the power to abuse them again on the off-chance that it might make for an interesting plot.
Not surprising from the "Shalooonsh may have his problems, but he's a good writer" crowd, to be sure.
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delirium
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Post by delirium on Oct 21, 2023 18:01:26 GMT -5
To indulge myself in being pedantic, he wasn't so much a good writer as he was an enthusiastic one who could rapid-fire creative emotes.
His actual stories are steamrolled shit.
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Post by jcarter on Oct 21, 2023 18:02:01 GMT -5
3: No psionicists played by staff. The reason we're discussing this one and considering lifting it, is because it's become apparent how few staff actually know how psionicists work. Given how idiosyncratic they are, it's very hard for those staff to weigh in on discussions about psionicists from a place of understanding and experience. Allowing staff to play one would give them a greater understanding which would enable them to better support a psionicist player. We would still limit them to 1 total among all of staff, and they would be under scrutiny. Boy if only there was a sandbox environment where staff could try things out...some sort of 'test port', if you will.
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Patuk
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Post by Patuk on Oct 21, 2023 21:54:00 GMT -5
It's okay. I am, in fact bad. Every argument I'm in? Just take the opposite side. You can't lose!
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 22, 2023 7:13:28 GMT -5
3: No psionicists played by staff. The reason we're discussing this one and considering lifting it, is because it's become apparent how few staff actually know how psionicists work. Given how idiosyncratic they are, it's very hard for those staff to weigh in on discussions about psionicists from a place of understanding and experience. Allowing staff to play one would give them a greater understanding which would enable them to better support a psionicist player. We would still limit them to 1 total among all of staff, and they would be under scrutiny. Boy if only there was a sandbox environment where staff could try things out...some sort of 'test port', if you will. The staff's excuse for why that wouldn't be suitable is because what they really want is to be immersed in the psionicist experience, and figure out why playing a psi is dreadful shit.
They can't possibly just ask any of the dozens of people that have played a psi at this point. They can't just take players' word for it that it is awful and boring to train the skills, and goes to shit instantly when you fail a suggest attempt on some random asshole on the other side of the world and are immediately killed after word travels through the grapevine that the mindbender's image looked towering and had muddy hair.
We just can't quite put our finger on what the problem might be. Psionicists have only been in the game for like 20+ years so they're going to need just a bit more time to figure it out on their own.
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Post by psyxypher on Oct 22, 2023 15:43:49 GMT -5
Given that Psionicists are second only to staff in terms of omniscience, this will most likely end poorly.
I guarantee you that someone is going to end up Mindblasted to death from some staff alt hidden in a remote part of the world most players haven't even heard of that'd be totally inhospitable to someone who can't produce their own food.
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