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Post by najdorf on Apr 22, 2024 8:38:47 GMT -5
guess it all depends on who values what what, and then claiming their interests are better than yours.
My old pap used to complain I'm wasting my time in my twenties, while he was watching 3rd league soccer games whole weekend. He was the kind of guy who would watch the replay of a 0 - 0 drawn cagliari - brescia game (those knowing italian defense being boring would understand)
So yeah, I spent a zillion hours playing diablo 2 in my young days, taking all characters to lvl 99, breaking records, spending great time (or wasting time for some others)
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eugene
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Post by eugene on Apr 22, 2024 11:53:34 GMT -5
Another issue is when certain games timegate the grind; it's not even about how much effort you put into it, but you just have to wait. Harshlands and SoI did this to some extent with certain features.
The other edge of that is you get some players who are genuinely good roleplayers, but have lives and only play for a few hours per week. They have to go up against the lifers who want to put their nose to the grindstone and end up overpowering everyone. Do you give the grinders what they want, or do you lessen the rewards which punishes the players who are otherwise good but don't spend as much time playing? It's a delicate balance of giving a mouse a cookie and then putting up with him and his friends when they start nagging you for a glass of milk.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 22, 2024 13:52:08 GMT -5
And no matter how skill grinding is adjusted, Armageddon will always have a "social grind" which favors people that can put in long hours, especially across multiple timezones. There really is no winning that particular fight. The people that put in the most hours not only tend to have the best skills, but tend to have the most loyal connections and run the biggest clans. The game needs a cultural change founded on mutual respect for other players' time, not a code change, to fix its biggest problems.
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eugene
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Post by eugene on Apr 22, 2024 15:03:19 GMT -5
I don't see any intrinsic problem with a player who spends a shitload of time building up his or her skills and connections in a roleplaying game. If you put in the time, you should get something back. The problems begin when that player begins to flex his or her power in certain ways which bother other players, or when that player's in-character goals get in the way of what a roleplay administrator/storyteller wants to do. The worst is when a player accumulates a lot of in-character power and turns out to be a complete fucking asshole with it, which administrators have a difficult time dealing with. How do you solve the problem of unfairness? In life, things are unfair and you have to deal with it because there are no other options. In a game, you deal with unfairness by walking away from it. Some players are okay with it. I have certainly played MUDs where my character's in-character adversary had significant power over mine and was played by a person whom I respected and enjoyed having as my adversary. I have also played MUDs where my character's in-character adversary had significant power over mine and was played by a person who genuinely fucking hated me, the person behind the keyboard, and made sure I knew it. How do you manage this stuff? Damned if I know. It really only works if everyone trusts everyone else to play by the rules, which no one ever does in RPI MUDs.
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baron
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Post by baron on Apr 22, 2024 15:29:41 GMT -5
One solution to even the playing field for the time-constrained is to allow IC communication outside the game, like in a forum. I'm mostly convinced that doesn't happen in Armageddon because it would reduce the advantage of a staff member or staff pet playing a psion.
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eugene
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Post by eugene on Apr 22, 2024 15:46:45 GMT -5
One solution to even the playing field for the time-constrained is to allow IC communication outside the game, like in a forum. I'm mostly convinced that doesn't happen in Armageddon because it would reduce the advantage of a staff member or staff pet playing a psion. Some people have proposed MUDs where OOC communication is not punishable as long as it isn't outright cheating; e.g. if Eugene tells Baron the main clue to a plot that Mehtastic is running, thus spoiling the plot, that is punishable. However, if Baron tells Patuk to get online because Najdorf and his crew are about to attack their clan headquarters, that is kosher because - at the end of the day - it's getting people to play the game. Yeah, Najdorf and his buddies might be a little pissed because they can't just steamroll a few NPCs, but it's also not really unheard of in reality that Group A hears that Group B is about to fuck up their shit, and they assemble to defend it.
The problem with this sort of model is that OOC and IC becomes impossible to distinguish and OOC animosity bleeds right in.
I think the only way games like this can really function is if the rules are simple and the administration is transparent. No "don't look at the man behind the curtain" bullshit. If a player is punished and people want to know why, tell them. If an administrator is accused of wrongdoing, explain why those claims are wrong or - in proven cases of wrongdoing - remove the administrator. Does it happen where you have a productive administrator who is a piece of shit? Yes, but you have to take the L and remove a productive administrator who does fucky things in order to maintain community trust. Without it, you get Armageddon.
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baron
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Post by baron on Apr 22, 2024 18:44:45 GMT -5
I played only a couple of magickers for longer than a day. One of them got into a bad spot because of Whiran horseshit, and dug himself into a hole using the Rukkian spell to hide in a little pocket. Entomb or something? I don't remember what it's called.
Point is: suddenly an influx of players logged on, and then almost 20 people showed up to stare at the spot in the ground where my guy was hiding.
First off, awesome. That 20 other people gathered to PK my asshole gicker was cool as shit. Probably more were back in the cities getting reports about this spot in the ground where a semi-nefarious gicker was holed up. Content for all, and a non-shitty conclusion to my character's story. (well, non-shitty except for the Whiran crap. Truely nearly every significant spell on their list is designed to kill other people's fun or trivialize content.)
When something actually happens in an RP-focused game, people should be told about it and offered a chance to log in and join the fun.
It absolutely should be explicitly allowed. It's punishing to the suckers who play by the rules (ie, me back then) and rewarding to the people who don't. My few IC allies didn't log on. I wouldn't have known how to contact them outside of the game.
In the end, rules about containing IC knowledge only result in the people willing to flaunt the rules having a strong advantage and becoming the movers and shakers of the narrative. And staff have always been complicit in allowing themselves and their pets this privilege. If the game were to change for the better, the words "Find out IC" would be anathema, because it's not possible to enforce, and historically those in power have been exceptionally selective about how and when they try.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 23, 2024 9:47:10 GMT -5
The tricky part about that kind of coordination is that ideally it's used to bring players whose PCs are in all involved parties together for RP, but in practice it's mainly used to gang up on a player whose PC is defenseless and/or logged out. "Amos just logged out boys, time to burgle his apartment" is more along the lines of the type of shit I have been exposed to as a player of this game, and I have no doubt that it continues to happen.
Which circles back around to the game's culture and the fact that players strive for some vague sense of feeling victorious rather than making an entertaining story. Communication that encourages people to play is good, but when people have the wrong reasons for doing it, it immediately becomes a problem that must be resolved. The choices have historically been "ban the player" and "ban the practice", and since the staff generally don't like to ban their own friends, they opted for "ban the practice" even though it's impossible to actually enforce. Some amount of, shall we say, "player curation" might do the game some more good than pretending that genuine assholes will actually become better people for the sake of a 100-player text game. If only the staff were actually trusted to do it correctly.
To tie it back to seasons, it strikes me as odd that the only community-focused update has been about player moderation, and not about, you know, the players. If staff's expectations are exactly the same as before, then exactly the same things will happen as before, done by the same people as before (barring a few exceptions).
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Post by uncoolio on Apr 23, 2024 10:20:37 GMT -5
I played only a couple of magickers for longer than a day. One of them got into a bad spot because of Whiran horseshit, and dug himself into a hole using the Rukkian spell to hide in a little pocket. Entomb or something? I don't remember what it's called. Point is: suddenly an influx of players logged on, and then almost 20 people showed up to stare at the spot in the ground where my guy was hiding. First off, awesome. That 20 other people gathered to PK my asshole gicker was cool as shit. Probably more were back in the cities getting reports about this spot in the ground where a semi-nefarious gicker was holed up. Content for all, and a non-shitty conclusion to my character's story. (well, non-shitty except for the Whiran crap. Truely nearly every significant spell on their list is designed to kill other people's fun or trivialize content.) When something actually happens in an RP-focused game, people should be told about it and offered a chance to log in and join the fun. It absolutely should be explicitly allowed. It's punishing to the suckers who play by the rules (ie, me back then) and rewarding to the people who don't. My few IC allies didn't log on. I wouldn't have known how to contact them outside of the game. In the end, rules about containing IC knowledge only result in the people willing to flaunt the rules having a strong advantage and becoming the movers and shakers of the narrative. And staff have always been complicit in allowing themselves and their pets this privilege. If the game were to change for the better, the words "Find out IC" would be anathema, because it's not possible to enforce, and historically those in power have been exceptionally selective about how and when they try.
And it all hinged on those players (ab)using their OOC knowledge of the Burrow spell. They knew that you would be stuck in a virtual room one down from where you cast it and would eventually get spat out again, so they were aware that they could just stand there and wait. How do they explain that their characters knew this? They didn't. In all likelihood, it didn't even occur to them that their characters shouldn't know.
In reality, your character burrowed into the ground and disappeared, and any witnesses should assume that it works the way it does when any of the game's multiple burrowing creatures do that because they can travel by tunneling through the ground. Knowing OOCly how a spell works and using that information to PK a character is some of the worst roleplay imaginable, but Arm's standards are so low that not only will people happily do it, it generally doesn't even register to them that this is what they're doing. And for the most part, staff won't step in and mediate, because either this fact is lost on them as well or they just don't give a shit.
That's what you get in a game where players aren't held to any serious standards and staff only steps in to deal with the low-hanging fruit of scolding someone who attacked an NPC without using think and feel to explain why. There's this really weird thing where you will get in trouble for benign shit like raising your skills without expressly showing your reasons for doing whatever it took, but players can resort to wholesale bullshit and all-out griefing against each other and staff will bend over backwards to find some excuse for why it was allowed.
It rings so hollow when staff tells you not to bash chaltons repeatedly because that's "twinking your skills up" when you've just watched a karma-having player sparring with his buddy for an hour and a half in a repeated cycle of rest-stand-spar-rest, passing a regeneration shield back and forth as needed, and never once emoting. Or when someone walks in on your brand-new character foraging near Allanak and just attacks for no reason beyond the desire to land a kill. You see these things happen, you see your player complaints fall on deaf ears as staff always takes whatever side requires no action from them, and then you're supposed to be unwaveringly realistic and responsible with your own play? Fuck off.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 27, 2024 10:44:27 GMT -5
From today's release notes:
RIP Tuluk, 2021-2024. You were taken from us too soon. Not surprising, considering the focus of the first season is on Allanak.
Taking out Luir's as a starting option seems like an odd choice though. If you were thinking of just playing some rando tribal that occasionally uses The Very Important Road to go to Allanak and back, think again. You'll have to get your Armageddon fix by playing a true southerner.
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Post by generality on Apr 27, 2024 11:32:37 GMT -5
Very important road to nowhere, the new non-Allanak mecca is Red Storm. We're going to add taints to the beetle population that make you unable to navigate in silt storms, please follow us on Patreon and subscribe to our youtube channel for other cool updates!
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Patuk
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Post by Patuk on Apr 27, 2024 12:36:27 GMT -5
From today's release notes: RIP Tuluk, 2021-2024. You were taken from us too soon. Not surprising, considering the focus of the first season is on Allanak. Taking out Luir's as a starting option seems like an odd choice though. If you were thinking of just playing some rando tribal that occasionally uses The Very Important Road to go to Allanak and back, think again. You'll have to get your Armageddon fix by playing a true southerner. No? You pick tribal origin, start in Allanak, and then just..... Fuck off. Leave. Unless Luir's and Tuluk are closed entirely (not unlikely for the latter tbh), I don't think they closed off the option to play a PC of a different origin.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Apr 27, 2024 12:55:15 GMT -5
Sure, you could do that. You'd miss out on the Luir's starter shops and be forced into the inconvenience of having to set up your character while you are in-character, including risking desert travel just to put your character in the correct position according to their background. Because people tend to prefer the path of least resistance, you'd also reduce the number of people who actually play in Luir's because it's no longer easy to just point there, which reduces the need to use The Very Important Road because there's less of an interaction-related reason to use the road.
Take my commentary as just wondering why The Very Important Road was hyped up if they're de-emphasizing Luir's RP to the point of making it so that you can't even start there anymore.
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Post by najdorf on Apr 27, 2024 13:36:23 GMT -5
then they'll make the next seasons featuring only in Gaj. That's the whole reason worthless staff is trying to change the things, to prevent people from going for their own RP in desolate corners instead of abiding to their shitty roles. That's what we all did, with Masterless, in Storm, and as we ignored their plots more and more, it drove them crazy, made them disgust themselves because we took away the only accomplishment they could have in life, to DM a 3 people clan and feel priviledged.
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punished ppurg
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Post by punished ppurg on Apr 27, 2024 14:42:06 GMT -5
The stat ceiling calculus is a good change. Following it up with point-buy would be even better.
Removing Luir's from a point destination is a bad change. As others have said, a lot of utility and flavor in the starter shops is lost. As well as denying new blood from emerging there, making it de facto stagnant. You need outlier spheres, I'm not going to bother explaining it for the thousandth time.
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