baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 119 
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Post by baron on Oct 29, 2024 23:20:08 GMT -5
where were the improvements for the mundanes? basic systems to make the gameplay loop of gathering resources important, meaningful, or have any dependance on it? why the fuck would anyone want to walk into this game after seeing a post for it and sign up to be a byn trooper? oh boy, 100+ hours of grinding out combat skill gains just to go on a mission in the sewers where a trapdoor opens and slides me to my death. In fairness, the code copper/bronze smelting was fairly involved and interesting, if the documentation was reflected in the code, with pitfalls built-in for mages. It could have been more so. Like with the elemental convergence, maybe copper has the effects of what they proposed for bronze, and bronze could have gone to 11, just bloody awful for mages to be around. Blood spewing from your eyesockets bad to equip the stuff on an elementalist. The number of times the docs stated "but templars and sorcs are immune" was a little disappointing. If you're going to give mundane characters their own special toys to play with, then go all out. Maybe bronze helmets and masks could have protected people from psionic bullshit as well, at the cost of not being able to use the Way for communication unless you take your headgear off. The story of "Bronze Age Arm" is interesting enough that it could have been the starting point. Some merchant house or another discovers the secret of smelting tin + copper at day 0, the inciting incident, with all crafting recipes for the new material developed by crafter players as the player-base emergently discovers the effects the stuff has on ginkers (and templars and sorcs and psions, in my version). That would have given the anti-witch faction some real teeth. |
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Post by Azerbanjani on Oct 29, 2024 23:32:59 GMT -5
I finally started reading the staff stuff they are posting and it honestly feels like a joke of them being like 'Oh see we actually had stuff in mind!'.
Like out of nowhere Halaster was just going to introduce a crazy complicated automatic system for mages with no staff interference when people could barely get an echo from a mon elemental for...reasons?
Feels like something that would have been on the back burner forever and then come out for someone's OC (Donut Steele of House Fale)
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Post by pinkerdlu on Oct 29, 2024 23:33:50 GMT -5
where were the improvements for the mundanes? basic systems to make the gameplay loop of gathering resources important, meaningful, or have any dependance on it? why the fuck would anyone want to walk into this game after seeing a post for it and sign up to be a byn trooper? oh boy, 100+ hours of grinding out combat skill gains just to go on a mission in the sewers where a trapdoor opens and slides me to my death. In fairness, the code copper/bronze smelting was fairly involved and interesting, if the documentation was reflected in the code, with pitfalls built-in for mages. It could have been more so. Like with the elemental convergence, maybe copper has the effects of what they proposed for bronze, and bronze could have gone to 11, just bloody awful for mages to be around. Blood spewing from your eyesockets bad to equip the stuff on an elementalist. The number of times the docs stated "but templars and sorcs are immune" was a little disappointing. If you're going to give mundane characters their own special toys to play with, then go all out. Maybe bronze helmets and masks could have protected people from psionic bullshit as well, at the cost of not being able to use the Way for communication unless you take your headgear off. The story of "Bronze Age Arm" is interesting enough that it could have been the starting point. Some merchant house or another discovers the secret of smelting tin + copper at day 0, the inciting incident, with all crafting recipes for the new material developed by crafter players as the player-base emergently discovers the effects the stuff has on ginkers (and templars and sorcs and psions, in my version). That would have given the anti-witch faction some real teeth. No to be the bearer of bad news, but Bronze Age Arm already happened like 20+ years ago. Copper has always had anti-magick properties. Search up Delerak's old stories about his delf (Indra?) who got a copper longsword called Magekiller from a pickpocket that took it off a Templar. He went around killing magickers with it, and I'm pretty sure this was in the late 90s. The Copper Wars happened within the context of a geopolitical conflict between Allanak and Tuluk. I didn't get to participate, but it sounds like a much more interesting time than Magefall and secret GMH hijinks under sleeper sponsored roles. I know not every plotline can be unique like a snowflake, but rehashed (and unseen) plotpoints + the coded aspects of stuff that 95% of us didn't even get to see, don't really do anything for me. Have to agree that Templars and Sorcerers being immune almost entirely defeats the purpose. I'll never understand why they felt compelled to gatekeep all of this so heavily. You would think the staff team would realize that plots that get engagement from less than 5% of the playerbase (a couple of individuals) are incredibly high effort and low impact/reward. Even Tabletop DMs tend to have a clear understanding of this. The most engaging plots should be directed at the entire playerbase, or at the very least large segments of it. Entire clans and so on. Noble Houses in Armagedon always felt so sad to me. |
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Post by Azerbanjani on Oct 29, 2024 23:35:54 GMT -5
I thought Magekiller killed mages good because it was fancy/enchanted not because it was copper?
Then again I doubt they wrote that shit down.
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Post by pinkerdlu on Oct 29, 2024 23:41:09 GMT -5
I thought Magekiller killed mages good because it was fancy/enchanted not because it was copper? Then again I doubt they wrote that shit down. Another metal story. So around 02-03 Halaster made this sword called Mage Slayer it was a bronze longsword that he gave to a militia PC called Cross I believe? Not really sure. At the time I had a d-elf Sand Jakhals called Indra. I get an AIM from a buddy of mine who pastes me the description of this sword and I call bullshit. He's a city elf pick pocket and says he stole it off a militia guy. I still don't believe him so I tell him I will come down and see it. So I run into 'Nak and we play out a scene where he tells me if I take him north he will give me something worth more than I can imagine. Being a d-elf I was like fuck it I will take this idiot north. I was planning on killing him but Indra had a soft spot for city elves. Back then you have to realize most d-elves were actually solo and didn't run in tribes and you could also have tribeless d-elves back then. Anyway back to the story. So I run this fucker north and when we get there he takes the sword out and gives it to me and says he will give it to me for 2k sid. I'm like eh fuck it, so I give him the coin. So I have this bronze longsword that when you hit people with it drains all their mana. So I run around killing every mage I can find, and damn near plainsman and this whiran called storm lord. Eventually everything gets real crazy with the other d-elves and I sort an RPT for all the tribes to come together and talk about the sword. Indra believed that the sword was a sign for him to become an elven king and unite all the tribes as one and storm the city-states for plunder. The tribes felt differently. So anyway they wanted me to go throw the sword in the silt sea, well I decidd to give the thing back to the city elf because I was being hunted by a ton of people and was tired of dealing with it. So I give the sword back to my buddy and he ends up giving the thing to Eunoli a northern templar. Eunoli was played by a staffer who was also staffing the southern team with halaster so it all came full circle in the end. Yeah, I don't know if we could ever be sure. I don't see anything about enchantments being mentioned after a cursory look. Did other people have bronze/copper weapons? Did they have anti-magick properties? Regardless, whether they took that quality from all bronze weapons or just the Magekiller... concept had been done. |
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Post by uncoolio on Oct 30, 2024 0:10:36 GMT -5
Remember when seasons were announced and it was deemed hyperbolic to suggest that it could be the game's downfall? The concerns about player motivation when a season approaches its end, the fretting over a hard limit on character longevity, etc.? When only the shadowboarders dared to suggest that the game could die if this undertaking didn't hit the ground running? And now, before even wrapping up the first act of the first season, Arm has been permanently shut down. Crazy to think that just a handful of months ago, S1 launched to a peak of like 82 players. I don't think even the most jaded pessimists could have imagined that just four and a half months later, the game would literally no longer exist.
Armageddon really did have the shittiest community in the entire MUDverse. What a staggering collective failure. It is entirely fair and self-evidently true to say that this game's community sucked so much that it wasn't possible for the game to survive. Arm isn't gone because all the players left. It's gone because so many of its players and staff were such crappy human beings that the game couldn't survive with them in it. I've never seen that happen before to any game I've played or heard of. Have you? I feel like this is a pretty unique level of catastrophic failure.
It's been an interesting spectacle to follow. Fascinating on a sociological level.
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 119
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Post by baron on Oct 30, 2024 0:37:16 GMT -5
There were other copper weapons, mostly small knives. As far as I know, they had no anti-magic properties. Samos's sword, Magekiller, was unique. I don't know for a fact, but my impression was it was mage-killy because it was enchanted by a nilizi (or whatever) to be mage-killy.
Now that the game's done, it would be nice if any documentation about this kind of stuff was opened to public pursual. Or, you know, posted on github with the game's code and data.
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Post by eukelade on Oct 30, 2024 0:47:12 GMT -5
Magekiller was bronze, not copper. Eunoli had it for awhile, then I think Plainsman (Halaster's sorc) got his hands on it somehow. Last character who I knew for sure had it was Samos Rennik. I'm sure it wound up in the hands of other pcs since, I always understood it to be one of those legendary items staff handed out occasionally for epic reasons.
Holding up his narrow, etched bronze longsword, the rugged, stubble-bearded templar says, in southern-accented sirihish:
"If for some reason this thing -ever- is knocked out of my hand in a fight, or if I go down... dive for it."
The rugged, stubble-bearded templar says, in southern-accented sirihish:
"I ain't gonna be the templar who lost Magekiller. Even if somebody takes me out, don' let me go down as that. Make sure the whole unit knows."
<primary hand> a narrow, etched bronze longsword
This is an ornately-crafted longsword made of the metal bronze. Three
cords in length, the deadly-sharp blade of this weapon gleams brightly
whenever light reflects on it. It appears to be one solid piece of metal,
with a high-quality leather wrapped around the hilt to provide a good grip.
Just above the hilt, at the base of the blade, many tiny runes have been
etched into the metal, the sum of them forming a thick, swirling pattern.
The sword seems to weigh considerably less than it should and is
inexplicably well-balanced.
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Post by pinkerdlu on Oct 30, 2024 0:59:08 GMT -5
There were other copper weapons, mostly small knives. As far as I know, they had no anti-magic properties. Samos's sword, Magekiller, was unique. I don't know for a fact, but my impression was it was mage-killy because it was enchanted by a nilizi (or whatever) to be mage-killy. Now that the game's done, it would be nice if any documentation about this kind of stuff was opened to public pursual. Or, you know, posted on github with the game's code and data. I'm likely wrong then, it does sound like it was enchanted. It's a shame we didn't see a constant flow of unique weapons/items like this. There was to a certain extent, but it seems like most of them were hoarded/destroyed/purposefully stowed away. Any substance in this game was quick and fleeting. |
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,688
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 30, 2024 5:25:57 GMT -5
I'm mostly mildly certain there have been elementalists who transcended into elemental forms before. I think the new bit was codifying it such that it was a thing that happened to all max-branched elementalists, rather than just by narrative/storyteller fiat. Also, the best social deduction game is Blood on the Clocktower. It actually is what armageddon politics aspired to be in a 1 to 2 hour package. Blood on the Clock Tower is the best. The only problem is that it encourages players to split off and go into separate rooms to share information. If I was hosting a bunch of Armageddon players in my house for a game, I would have to insist that they keep the doors open, for a variety of reasons. |
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,688
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 30, 2024 5:59:41 GMT -5
Armageddon really did have the shittiest community in the entire MUDverse. What a staggering collective failure. It is entirely fair and self-evidently true to say that this game's community sucked so much that it wasn't possible for the game to survive. Arm isn't gone because all the players left. It's gone because so many of its players and staff were such crappy human beings that the game couldn't survive with them in it. I've never seen that happen before to any game I've played or heard of. Have you? I feel like this is a pretty unique level of catastrophic failure.
It's been an interesting spectacle to follow. Fascinating on a sociological level.
Given that it only took about 12 hours from the final announcement for the reminiscing to more-or-less end and the fighting to begin on the former game's Discord server, I would say the catastrophe isn't quite over yet. The usual suspects have rolled in to pick fights, and the standard moderator response of "pwease follow the rules 🥺" seems to simply be driving away the people that are under attack while keeping the attackers in-place, as usual. It would not surprise me if this was the desired result, considering certain moderators are in clique chats with some of the server's more rabid participants.
To answer your question, I said earlier that I've seen several other MUDs collapse. Armageddon is the first I've seen that collapsed specifically for this reason. It's not unique for a community to have some community issues, but it is unique for a community to completely unravel because its members cannot confront and remove the tumors to save the body. We already saw Apoc close its Discord server because they realized that they could not manage a community of Armageddon players. Other games will have to grapple with Armageddon refugees and deal with them intelligently.
This is why I think MUD communities shouldn't moderate with strike systems or give players more than one chance to shape up. Everyone in the community is ostensibly an adult. If an adult walked into a restaurant, dropped his pants to his ankles, started shitting into his hand, and flinging shit all over the place, they'd be asked to leave. The only reason Armageddon let the shit-throwers stay is because they couldn't bear to lose players. And now what? The game has zero players. Well done!
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Post by generality on Oct 30, 2024 8:05:59 GMT -5
The moderation model was always very suspect, it was more like one set of rules for these people and one set for everyone else. And while you're not staff we will groom you into being staff or just hire former staff/stockholm staff.
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jesantu
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 386
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Post by jesantu on Oct 30, 2024 8:38:16 GMT -5
Purely as a thought experiment, what do you think Hal and co would've done if, while the leaks were leaking, the population in game was huge? If, rather than a dwindling who list, it was instead constantly bustling and full of life?
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sawbot
staff puppet account
Posts: 40
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Post by sawbot on Oct 30, 2024 8:50:10 GMT -5
The staff spoilers thread had a underwhelming vibe, I felt like I was watching a trailer for a movie I knew was never going to live up to the hype.
Letting Armageddon go was probably the right move. The game had been on life support for so long that keeping it around felt more like a habit than a passion.
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Post by uncoolio on Oct 30, 2024 9:07:35 GMT -5
The moderation model was always very suspect, it was more like one set of rules for these people and one set for everyone else. And while you're not staff we will groom you into being staff or just hire former staff/stockholm staff. Arm's moderation model was really just a control scheme. It was a way to silence dissent and criticism, and to shield influential players from being held accountable for what they posted. I was moderated a number of times for what can only be described as "not being on our side." I don't even mean insults or hostility, just having a position that wasn't aligned with theirs.
One time I had enough of mansa consistently being just plain wrong about shit in his posts, effectively posting misinformation borne of his lack of understanding the game. I believe it was the feedback thread on that penalty to mundane skills for subclass mages. He just couldn't comprehend that these penalties applied only to subclass mages, not to full elementalists, and kept trying to dispute arguments based on that. I posted something like "look, if you want to participate in a debate about the way the game works, you have to actually understand how the game works." I was suspended for that.
The GDB was such a weirdly totalitarian cesspool. Their approach to moderation wasn't based on the need to keep the peace, it was more about making sure that the right people (you know who I'm talking about) could "win" discussions by making it impossible to refute their posts, even when they posted something that was just demonstrably incorrect. You were not allowed to inform them that they were wrong. That was harassment.
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