Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2014 16:16:11 GMT -5
Oh yeah, Armageddon has by FAR the biggest staff in the fucking history of the RPI genre, which makes it all the more embarrassing that they're simultaneously the one game where the staff does the least. But, but but but oldtwink! They're VOLUNTEERS!No, but seriously, I agree with you. That volunteer thing is sad. I volunteered, probably 1 in 2 players would if given the chance, and players volunteer their time, too. See, the thing is, if you were volunteering at a soup kitchen, for instance, and everytime someone asked you for soup, you gave them hoops to jump through and made them run around forever, and would never give any soup out without reminding the person you were serving that you were a volunteer, that would make you the worst volunteer ever and people would think you were a jerk. I see no difference, there, that's the same way it comes off when you get pissy with people who want anything, throwing up in their face that you're doing what you wouldn't let many of them do even if they offered, and volunteering and then reminding them about all you do and all the time you put in, it's just going to make everyone like you less.
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delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Jan 24, 2014 20:01:34 GMT -5
Arm is literally clinging to the only thing it has left: the Darksun setting. I've always said that. Change the setting and they have nothing. It's all garbage nowadays. I logged in the other day and ran around the known for a few hours with my indie ranger. Nothing man. Nothing really intriguing is going on anywhere. Tuluk was a great attempt but I refuse to play in Tuluk because of its blatant favoritism and its history of how it came about in the world.
I'm gonna stick to EoE for my mudding nowadays.
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Hardboiled
Clueless newb
Eggs, their good for you.
Posts: 116
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Post by Hardboiled on Jan 25, 2014 19:09:19 GMT -5
I can't blame people for getting together with a couple aim friends and going off to do something fun. However lets face it what can a person do in the game? At most they get together and go off RPing with each other, having fun that way as they explore the nooks and crannies of the world. That would be my idea at least. Again unless you have staff approval or support its really hard to do anything grand, and if the staff things you are too effective or perhaps they think you killed too many people with your group well ask drunkendwarf what happens.
A lot of the major clans are pretty restrictive, so its no surprise they don't have a lot of people or people are just their to train before fucking off and going solo. Not being restricted to an outpost, or unable to leave the gates or having to follow stupid fucking schedules. Don't let anyone kid you though, there are no real plots in the clans often either. You join a clan for a rl month or two and what do you get? Maybe a trip somewhere if you are lucky. Its not as if the leaders don't have any grand ideas, just that some of those ideas require work by staff...good luck getting that work approved. You cannot play a month or two or six and sink your teeth into some juicy plot that is going on because their are none. Its mostly social situations and mediocre drama: X was rude to me, B didn't give me proper respect, Y wants to become rich, C wants to become skilled. There is supposed to be an ongoing war between nak and tuluk isn't there? You could do so much with that, for the longest time tuluk and allanak have almost been separate games to play. The events leading up to the HRPT day is really how things should be all the time. It wouldn't be hard with some proper design and planning. The copper war is another great example, just sit two groups close to each other and poof conflict and role play happens. You don't need to do that much work to mobilize players into a situation where they are in conflict with one another. It might take a bit of work and effort at first, but after that all you have to do is sit back and watch the sparks fly. It shouldn't be a once every two years event to actually get some meaningful plots going.
But no, instead we have tuluk on one side, how long have players been complaining about mindbending plot killing templars? Hi Qoriya's player! (You know you are part of the reason some people don't play in Tuluk anymore to set up those events you wish you could see more of, thanks for posting though in that thread, don't worry though Nyr is actually a larger part of that problem from what I've heard) The solution was clearly to make a new system that restricts assassins and sneaky shit even more. That will make plots! And how about if they make the systems so no one but the staff and the templar truly know the entire fucking plot someone might manage to scrounge up, that will make everything MOAR fun. How about a system where you risk your hard train assassin just by being in it? Wonderful. We have allanak in the other side where you are stuck joining clans that where you have nothing better to do then fucking ruf circle all day. These two places cannot interact with each other in any meaningful way and if any player things they can find a decent solution, well good luck getting through to the imms with all that work they have to do managing ...umm...well volunteering their time.
Sorry but getting a small group of friends and doing stuff together is probably the best way to enjoy the game these days. There is really nothing more going on. There are ideas. God there are a lot of ideas. Some of the clan leaders are hopeful that someday staff will implement their ideas and the members of their clan might actually have some fun. However I've found that's not often the case, again a trip somewhere remote for some silly reason to die virtually or to an npc is the most you often get. Even then, two, three, six months of your life stuck in isolated restrictive conditions just for that? In that amount of time the shit you could achieve somewhere else, doing ANYTHING else.
Old twink got it partially right, most of the clans right now having nothing to do, however the other part of this is that its compounded by the fact that the clan leaders and members are also not allowed and/or supported should they come up with something to do. Remember every member and leader in a clan, even military ones with templars are just a small group in a larger organization that prefers status quo.
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Post by gloryhound on Jan 29, 2014 15:40:40 GMT -5
The more socially oriented the game's staff becomes, the less motivated it is to build or make changes. To the social player, the code and descriptions are just a backdrop to what really matters, after all, which is all the shenanigans with other PCs. That is where the social player gets a reward.
If I remember correctly, they've even stated in staff recruiting posts that they're more interested in someone who can fit with the team than someone with glorious ideas and writing/implementing skills. The staff is like a social club, with the top level admitting new members and promoting according to whether they have the same mindset.
The code and descriptions themselves are a cool system that have a general appeal to all sorts of players though and maybe this is where the dissatisfaction comes in. The achiever sorts are drawn in to skill up and explore the different races and classes, but in the end they start wanting something more than the staff is really willing to provide, which is to be able to impact the world. Morgenes might argue differently, and there is no doubt that the changes he continuously adds in are a general benefit to the game play, but the truth is you could come back from a ten year absence and quickly be back in the game because nothing fundamental has changed or been enhanced. Sure, Tuluk had been destroyed then recaptured, yada yada yada, but the game still plays the same.
If there were one thing I could change, it would be to give the Storytellers much more leeway to create and run plots.
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Post by gloryhound on Feb 5, 2014 14:46:34 GMT -5
Nyr seems to be moderating the GDB with a lighter hand lately, which is appreciated.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2014 10:02:12 GMT -5
the question that never seems to get asked, and certainly not answered, is why is there such a barrier for players to have a dump room for their equipment, and a private room for meetings? It's pretty clearly not an IC issue (a whopping 400 sids when your average commoner is destitute and can barely afford water?), so there's some mentality from the staff that's sayign let's make this space a luxury because...? Ah, I didn't see this until just now: I would venture to say that it is sheerly an OOC thing, as so many things reveal themselves to be with enough time playing. ie: Staff doesn't feel like building more, the playerbase needs to be consolidated, etc. Actually, before she left as a Producer, Vanth was working on adding an apartment building somewhere atop/beside/behind the Gaj that was supposed to go in, but it's just fallen by the wayside. As I said, though, I think it's probably because for some reason, people think it will round the players up for more interaction. Although, to be frank, I think that 400 coins is very much inline with "Cheap" via the ingame economy, as "rent" goes, given that it's about the cost of 10 bottles of hard liquor - my first cheap place was about $250/rl month, which is about 10X the price of a bottle of hard liquor. Maybe it's just me though, as to that. I think the better idea would be to simply make basic clan pay for full employees (not trainees/recruits/etc) 2x average apartment rent per pay pickup. I think that that would fix the economy, even. And it goes without saying, I think, that the nobility's pay should increase on the same scale. I was -not- happy to find that with a middle tier allanaki noble I had 5k pay to cover clothes, bribes, bonuses, and employee pay/bonuses indefinitely (this way before the automated pay system). That is in line with a very profitable salting group in an IC week or two. If you had to, say, increase average employee pay to, say, 2k/month, it would increase middle tier noble house pay to about 30k (in theory, that number could've been adjusted for me, no idea). Nice to see they're finally planning to add in the apartments above the Gaj. That's going to make some people really happy. I just wish I had gone and looked at what they looked like before leaving staff, because now even if someone copy/pastes the description of one of them to me, I'll always wonder if they were left as Vanth wrote them or changed before being added to the game.
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Post by jcarter on Feb 10, 2014 22:20:10 GMT -5
Ah, I didn't see this until just now: I would venture to say that it is sheerly an OOC thing, as so many things reveal themselves to be with enough time playing. ie: Staff doesn't feel like building more, the playerbase needs to be consolidated, etc. Actually, before she left as a Producer, Vanth was working on adding an apartment building somewhere atop/beside/behind the Gaj that was supposed to go in, but it's just fallen by the wayside. As I said, though, I think it's probably because for some reason, people think it will round the players up for more interaction. Although, to be frank, I think that 400 coins is very much inline with "Cheap" via the ingame economy, as "rent" goes, given that it's about the cost of 10 bottles of hard liquor - my first cheap place was about $250/rl month, which is about 10X the price of a bottle of hard liquor. Maybe it's just me though, as to that. I think the better idea would be to simply make basic clan pay for full employees (not trainees/recruits/etc) 2x average apartment rent per pay pickup. I think that that would fix the economy, even. And it goes without saying, I think, that the nobility's pay should increase on the same scale. I was -not- happy to find that with a middle tier allanaki noble I had 5k pay to cover clothes, bribes, bonuses, and employee pay/bonuses indefinitely (this way before the automated pay system). That is in line with a very profitable salting group in an IC week or two. If you had to, say, increase average employee pay to, say, 2k/month, it would increase middle tier noble house pay to about 30k (in theory, that number could've been adjusted for me, no idea). Nice to see they're finally planning to add in the apartments above the Gaj. That's going to make some people really happy. I just wish I had gone and looked at what they looked like before leaving staff, because now even if someone copy/pastes the description of one of them to me, I'll always wonder if they were left as Vanth wrote them or changed before being added to the game. ahahahaha holy shit at this point I'm almost convinced that the staff is taking more suggestions from this board than the GDB. First Lirathans get retconned and now this.
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dcdc
Shartist
Posts: 531
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Post by dcdc on Feb 11, 2014 11:02:49 GMT -5
Nice to see they're finally planning to add in the apartments above the Gaj. That's going to make some people really happy. I just wish I had gone and looked at what they looked like before leaving staff, because now even if someone copy/pastes the description of one of them to me, I'll always wonder if they were left as Vanth wrote them or changed before being added to the game. ahahahaha holy shit at this point I'm almost convinced that the staff is taking more suggestions from this board than the GDB. First Lirathans get retconned and now this. Maybe they are, how long do you think a MUD, with a 20+ year old code base is going to keep holding up? We've all but got Virtual Reality in the homes, in a few years that will change even. How long does a text based online game that refuses to change going to stick around? Attract players?
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Post by themountaingoat on Feb 11, 2014 11:41:19 GMT -5
Judging by the average nightly player count, quite a long time. It's no doubt a voting effort, but Armageddon seems to have more players than ever lately.
Is that a good thing? I dunno.
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dcdc
Shartist
Posts: 531
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Post by dcdc on Feb 11, 2014 12:36:23 GMT -5
Player count ain't everything. And now as far as I know, Armageddon is the only RPI out there.
I love the game, I really do, understand I've got a powerful 1000 dollar rig that can run triple AAA titles quiet easily, so to being playing a MUD is almost goofy but no experience matches it.
But the community is just dying to have something else. Look at the membership of this site. A lot of us have no real ill will towards the staff or the game. All it would take is a well rounded team with some solid leadership and good system for accountability (not easy tasks mind you, but not exceptionally difficult either) And another RPI MUD could totally uproot it given time a little buzz. That should make the Staff want to improve the experience, grow as a community and game. As oppose to the current maintaining the status quo, making changes rarely.
Their idea of consolidating the player base is wrong too. You don't systematically eliminate places for players to be, and thus shrinking the world, till we are all playing in the same 100 rooms. That leads to the worse kind of stagnation. You make the cities and the area's you want players, appeal to them, good plots, good clans, fun jobs, and interesting characters. Instead they change almost nothing and eliminate reasons for exploration. If not, seems to actively discourage the practice. I don't understand the mentality. Granted I've never staffed a MUD before, but jamming all the players into a smaller and smaller area, eliminating secrets area's, and reducing the NPC/VNPC population of the wastes seems like the exact opposite direction to go.
I hoping they aren't whole sale planning to eliminate whole sections of the wilderness but, you can't seem to tell. And it "feels" as if they'd rather we all roll up Fme's and just tavern sit and admire the room descriptions a few hours everyday.
Of course all of the above is pure speculation, I'm not going to pretend I know whats going on behind the scenes, but from my perspective that's what I see.
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Lizzie
Clueless newb
Posts: 199
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Post by Lizzie on Feb 12, 2014 9:46:35 GMT -5
Player count ain't everything. And now as far as I know, Armageddon is the only RPI out there. There's Parallel RPI and Black Sands, to name two off my head. I think Black Sands is actually staffed by former Arm people, to boot. They're just not insanely active. You disgruntled folk could change that, though, as both are pretty great.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2014 10:55:54 GMT -5
Arm has two things going for it: it was the only RPI for years and years so there's a bunch of veterans who were too settled to move on before the newer ones even came out, and it's a twink's haven. Really, there's so many people who play Arm precisely because you can get away with some ridiculous shit and because griefing is a legitimate way to play the game. You would never get away with it on the other games. Go to SOI or Atonement or Black Sands and spend all your time alternating between murdering NPCs for skill gains and PKing everybody you can get away with, and they'll ban you from the game pretty quickly because you're a fucking menace.
On Arm, as long as you emote a little here and there and don't exploit bugs or kill off sponsored roles, you can get away with making a PC whose entire purpose is to just kill people. There's literally no other game in the WORLD with this combination of acceptable griefing and consequence of actions. Regular PvP games don't hit the spot because the victim doesn't lose anything significant, and the other roleplaying games don't allow it. Arm might frown a little on code-twinking and wanton PKing, but they don't do anything significant about it. At worst you'll come to be regarded as kind of a prick. You have to actively step on staff's toes before anything really happens, and that's pretty easy to avoid.
Armageddon is uniquely suited to people who want to grind skills, impose themselves on other players, exert their coded dominance upon unwilling people, and know that the consequences for the victims were immense. Even if you don't want to PK people and just want to grind skills and do unrealistic, completely OOC exploration in a game where people are required to be in character, Arm is pretty much the only available game, too. So many people play on the thinnest possible pretense of roleplay and clearly just log in to raise their skills, which is also something that other RPIs don't approve of while on Arm it's so normal that it doesn't even raise eyebrows.
This is why the game has always had such high numbers. If you were to look at how many players actually participate in meaningful roleplay and add to the setting, the effective playerbase is really small, far too small to sustain the game. This is also why the game so often feels empty despite there being 50+ players online.
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Post by lyse on Feb 23, 2014 14:40:58 GMT -5
I'll play. Why is a life skill like cooking so low to start?
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payne
staff puppet account
Afraid of the Light
Posts: 6
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Post by payne on Feb 24, 2014 1:23:12 GMT -5
I'll play. Why is a life skill like cooking so low to start? The same, no doubt nonsensical reason skills that your character has relied on to survive their entire life start out so low to start. 80 year old elven pickpocket? Novice thief glhf. Grizzled 40 year old hunter? Novice archery. There is hope. Perhaps by the year 2024 they will actually let skills scale by age to a degree in addition to the skill bump system that has been in essentially beta for ages along with extended sub-guilds. The documentation does say "yet" for skills not improving with age. I wouldn't get my hopes up.
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Post by lyse on Feb 24, 2014 9:20:56 GMT -5
I'll play. Why is a life skill like cooking so low to start? The same, no doubt nonsensical reason skills that your character has relied on to survive their entire life start out so low to start. 80 year old elven pickpocket? Novice thief glhf. Grizzled 40 year old hunter? Novice archery. There is hope. Perhaps by the year 2024 they will actually let skills scale by age to a degree in addition to the skill bump system that has been in essentially beta for ages along with extended sub-guilds. The documentation does say "yet" for skills not improving with age. I wouldn't get my hopes up. Honestly, I think that would be a very simple fix. Whoever reviews your background should be able to adjust your stats to fit your background. You spent 20 years in the AoD until you got caught fucking your lieutenants wife? You can have two skills of your choosing up to journeyman. Nothing past journeyman, but a little bump to suit your character. You spent the last ten years grebbing after a gith raiding party? You get a journeyman in forage and a bump to fighting creatures in the category gith fall under. But why stop there? Why not have flaws that stem from your background too? You were a 'Rinth prostitute before your powers manifested. You got crabs, 'ho!!!
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