mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
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Post by mehtastic on Aug 6, 2024 14:38:57 GMT -5
The staff finally realized the game has a toxic community, after multiple players received death threats (to their characters) from throwaway accounts on the GDB and on Facebook. Part of the reason I haven't given the staff too much shit for losing 12 players in the last week is because at least some of them are probably banned.
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Patuk
Shartist
Posts: 552
Member is Online
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Post by Patuk on Aug 6, 2024 16:06:26 GMT -5
Two months ago, Seasons launched. People see who one of the local Templars (again) is. A bunch jump ship. Up to and including prospective leaders and members of the staff team.
Surely, though, that has nothing to do with today's change. Surely not.
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Post by gringoose on Aug 6, 2024 17:27:27 GMT -5
I wonder how they're dealing with the cheaters they ban. Unless the cheaters are directly driving away other players they're probably being as diplomatic as possible and handing out temp bans and telling them they'll be welcome back once the ban term is over as long as they stop cheating. They won't stop and will just be more careful and have tighter cliques. If staff cracked down hard on cheaters then Arm's population would drop like 25% and they can't afford to lose that many of the most active players.
I didn't ever need this rule. After a year of playing I always used throwaway forum accounts for clans specifically because of my total distrust of other players. At the time I wasn't even sure that I was allowed to use throwaways but did it anyway. It's funny that they're requiring it now. There's nothing really wrong or bad with them instituting this rule but it's a cope bandaid just as I had did it myself.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
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Post by mehtastic on Aug 6, 2024 20:58:18 GMT -5
I think a lot of players will take staff at their word that they're doing this solely because of cheaters who are engaging in "concerning things outside of the game" as Usiku put it, and wonder why they're being collectively punished with the inconvenience of having to create new accounts for every time they have a PC join a clan, just because a few people are engaging in your standard grade OOC collusion. The staff should have just stated the real reason for it, which is most likely the fake Cerelum post here from a few days ago as well as the rumors of out-of-game harassment directed at specific players of certain PCs. They probably think that whoever is doing it is IDing players based on their GDB handles used in clan forums, which may be correct. It would have painted Armageddon as infested with toughguys who send each other death threats against their PCs and it would be harder to grow the game in that light, but at least the players wouldn't feel punished and might even actually band together to help fix the community. The possibility that Patuk touched on is interesting, but I genuinely think the staff aren't even thinking about picking The Lonely Hunter for a templar and all the shit that ensued afterward anymore. This reeks of a snap decision made on a whim after a quick series of recent events, not something that requires a long-term memory to begin to consider. I'm sure the staff will be pleased with it as a side effect. This change won't affect standard cheating at all, but it will limit the ability for the people who are most obsessed with winning the game or being a top-tier sex pest to actually operate. In the long run, the people putting in 19 hours daily in order to win the game are going to have a harder time running intimidation campaigns on the correct target. Perhaps more importantly to the staff, it significantly narrows the field of possible leaks of who plays who to the people who have access to other players' IP addresses.*
* This assumes players engage in perfect secrecy themselves, which they obviously won't.
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Post by generality on Aug 7, 2024 2:17:37 GMT -5
To me, Cerelum is dumb and likes to do dumb things, but they aren't actively trying to ruin the game for other people.
I think it's not really tough guys, it's the children who can't share the candy or the trouble maker types who want to be in all the plots but want none of the responsibility of taking the work and pressure entailed with those plots. However, your views may be based on information I don't have or want to get.
The Lonely Hunter was an awful templar, twice and an awful noble. A situation made worse by the fact there are statues and fields and shit all with his name on them. So he is institutionally detrimental to storylines that he doesn't dominate. And the funniest thing is, other people would do it if they had the chance too.
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Post by lyse on Aug 7, 2024 5:53:02 GMT -5
Welp….guess I won’t be needing that new Excel map.
It’s kinda sad I can find better behavior and RP on a fivem or Conan server than Arm.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
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Post by mehtastic on Aug 7, 2024 6:54:24 GMT -5
I think it's not really tough guys, it's the children who can't share the candy or the trouble maker types who want to be in all the plots but want none of the responsibility of taking the work and pressure entailed with those plots. However, your views may be based on information I don't have or want to get. The logical extension of being a troublemaker type who wants to be in all the plots without any of the responsibility, is the type of OOC networking that leads to cliques and attempts to gain advantages out of game. TLH is a convenient example of this, but realistically speaking, both templar players have OOC cliques with supporters. Both of them have friendly contacts in-game that were made out-of-game. If staff paid attention, they would see that these players played cooperative PCs together in the past and just so happen to be doing the same thing now. It's reasonably safe to conclude that the cliques are aware of each other's existence and work to subvert the other group's efforts in-game and out. GDB handles give away the presence of a clique, and making a clan alt for every character hides identities from players that are out of the loop. But there is nothing stopping a staff member of informing a player friend that a particular character is played by a particular player. There is nothing stopping a player moderator from checking the IP address of a GDB account and checking it against other accounts. It really is a wonder to behold just how much OOC bad behavior has fucked the game up and the game hasn't even been open for a full two months yet. This is just the type of community Armageddon has, fostered by staff who fail to put two and two together and are far too trusting of bad actors, and maintained by the players who feel the need to play the OOC game for that IC advantage. Lyse is right that there is better RP to be had elsewhere. Armageddon's staying power mostly comes from its age, and the OOCly disconnected players who play in blissful ignorance of the antics of the cliques. |
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jesantu
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 386 
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Post by jesantu on Aug 7, 2024 7:03:32 GMT -5
The Lonely Hunter was an awful templar, twice and an awful noble. A situation made worse by the fact there are statues and fields and shit all with his name on them. So he is institutionally detrimental to storylines that he doesn't dominate. And the funniest thing is, other people would do it if they had the chance too. The Lonely Hunter's nobles and templars are all identical personalities. When I see one of his PC statues, I immediately think of his other ones. He went from playing Baranzalik Fale for a single month, stored, then became Zanarik Oash. Even the names are self-plagiarisms! But as generality points out, other people would do it too if they were just afforded the same number of repeat opportunities TLH has had all these years. |
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Post by generality on Aug 7, 2024 7:39:07 GMT -5
Yep, Zealus is not as destructive as TLH but the whole mod / semi staff / former staff clique is kind of the same thing TLH has behind them.
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val
staff puppet account
Posts: 45
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Post by val on Aug 7, 2024 10:02:20 GMT -5
I hate clan GDBs. I hate knowing who is playing who. It makes my stance on the alt-GDB handle requirement (opposed) feel kind of ironic to me, but anything labeled as 'we're taking away your choices and agency for your own good' gets my hackles up. This reeks of a snap decision made on a whim after a quick series of recent events, not something that requires a long-term memory to begin to consider. Right? Less reactionary alternatives could have been 'as a PSA, we believe that people have been using GDB clan accounts to identify and target other players, please be aware that you can and probably should create alternate accounts for clan GDBs' or 'let's talk about whether this proposed policy would be a good idea' rather than an announcement of a blanket policy, effective immediately. Even if it would solve the problem, which it will not. The person's playtime are generally consistent across characters. A specific method of describing characters is consistent across characters. Punctuation styles, emote styles, and certain misspellings are consistent across characters. It only takes putting two things together to have a good guess of who is playing who, even if that person doesn't leak the information themself. And people will share that around and speculate together, no many how many rules are laid down about it, because humans are social monkeys who love their tea and hot goss and petty mean-girls nonsense. I've put way too much thought into this today. I need to go touch grass. |
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098
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Post by punished ppurg on Aug 8, 2024 2:55:02 GMT -5
I would try to solve this by making all clan documentation public archive, then installing an "ic" means of way mudmail that allows for character targeting and clan targeting. To get around the primary key issue of multiple Amos, we could have randomly generated adjectives and do a dictionary array comparison.
>Contact dood
>Pinpoint
You feel that your current contact is juicy-yearning-muscle-meat.
Later on, when dood is not online or contactable:
Psi message juicy-yearning-muscle-meat Hey sarge I will be in wall duty for the next couple weeks.
When dood logs in, he gets the message. And you can message Tzai-Byn and all clannies get it when they log in. Or Lord Nugget could message Tzai-Byn and let everyone know they want a contract. Etc.
It would also be possible to inject a user account into the simple machines forum database from inside the mud for whenever a character runs a function for requesting a forum handle. But this is the black magic.
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Post by generality on Aug 8, 2024 5:18:23 GMT -5
It's okay, the discussion thread has been adopted by Lotion as their newest means of arguing with people. It has reached its zenith.
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alleys
Clueless newb
Posts: 87
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Post by alleys on Aug 8, 2024 7:47:22 GMT -5
"I hate all of you, but I get bored when I'm alone"
Most of this board and GDB can be summarized into that one sentence. (A tweet by Turkish singer known by using a lot of recreational drugs)
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ask
Clueless newb
Posts: 137
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Post by ask on Aug 8, 2024 10:10:15 GMT -5
This is what happens when you have the same people with their same friends in power for so long, a break to make seasons or not.
Luckily, there are other games in the works, and hopefully they won't be quite so fucking toxic.
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alleys
Clueless newb
Posts: 87
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Post by alleys on Aug 8, 2024 11:08:00 GMT -5
ARM is so old and Ask is right. All communities tend to go that way.
I feel minority of the players are toxic at heart. But they tend to be very active on online communication channels and well.. results in echo chamber effect. People in the circle begin to feel everybody is like that. Last month around 190-200+ players played the game. I just see a handful people here, GDB and even Discord, posting messages, let alone toxic people.
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