jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,070
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Post by jkarr on Mar 8, 2018 15:34:58 GMT -5
You're right. Technically it was my second newbie. I followed all the protocols .. I wished up, well in advance, on both. The first was a prostitute I lured into a dwarven tenement and murdered. The dwarven shopkeeper NPC told the Templars who then arrested me. Half His Arm turned out for the murder of an unaffiliated whore. mostly fair save for wasting that much time and resources over a scared dwarf and a dead whore The second was an elven thief who spam-robbed me in Luir's. He failed and got dragged off to the jail. I looked in my inventory and noticed a bunch of stuff gone. Can I get my stuff back from that thief you just hauled off? Nope. Can I bribe a guard to let me into the cell to maim him? Nope. So I punched the half-elf stablehand in the face, got arrested for it, and went in the cell and beat the elf unconscious. Consent to maim? Nope. So I emoted that I brutally kicked his unconscious form after I took my stuff back. He emoted something about being undamaged because of his elven superiority. What? So annoyed by the poor RP, I killed him. (After wishing up that I was about to kill him.) They then wished down to complain about it being a newbie and said I was "power emoting" about kicking him on the ground. Really? Was he going to resist being kicked while he's unconscious? this is fucking retarded if ur knocked out u have shit for control over what ppl do to ur pc I then said that, if at any point during the 20 minute ordeal where I'd wished up my intentions at least 4 times you'd said it was a newbie, I'd have abandoned that. There's no newbie flag. Only they know who is a newbie unless the person just ABSOLUTELY sucks at rp. So what exactly is wishing up prior to a PK about anyway? exactly ur not sposed to be metagaming around ooc shit, much less actively trying to guess abt the player behind the keyboard and adapting ur ic behavior to that I learned everything I needed about their attitude towards death when they let elves kill me in the mul outpost by shooting arrows into the building, restored a gick from the dead after me and a buddy killed him, and then threatened me for killing too many people when I was the Face of the Guild, you know, the Guild. That shadowy league of assassins who gets paid to kill people. theyre too fucking scared of their losing their whiny butthurt pbase (instead of telling them to fucking grow up and deal with it) to let u do perfectly plausible shit to them thru ur role |
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OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257 
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Post by OT on Mar 8, 2018 15:58:56 GMT -5
Behind every malcontent is a reason. We've all been through this shit. This forum was created because too many people experienced the arbitrary intrusiveness of staff, or recognized the effect this had on the game.
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Post by shakes on Mar 8, 2018 16:11:47 GMT -5
It's not even all the staff. There were a couple I interacted with frequently who I really enjoyed. They seemed to share the same vision of play that I had and while they didn't do anything to support me beyond a cheerful and chipper "Ok!" in character or pk reports, they also didn't squish me.
And some of them USED to be pretty chill and then just suddenly shifted. I feel like that may have happened when I foolishly thought it would be fine to participate in the forum on non-game topics (political and such). It was about that time I suddenly started noticing really abrasive responses to reports from people who had otherwise always been pretty cool with me. Maybe that's just paranoia, but I'll tell you this ... if I find another mud to play at some point, I won't participate in any forum it has.
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Post by jcarter on Mar 8, 2018 16:35:25 GMT -5
Mud players are some of the most petty and bitter people, no surprise they would hold a grudge. Hell look at me, I'm running the #1 arm fansite and I haven't played in years!
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Post by shakes on Mar 8, 2018 16:50:42 GMT -5
You're not doing much for my desire to perhaps find another mud to play.
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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: 1,670
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Post by delerak on Mar 8, 2018 18:39:33 GMT -5
wouldn't it be cool if arm started adding content like ruins/dungeons/oases and shit.
instead of having aa 50x50 grid of rooms that read "You're in a desert with dunes, it's lifeless." it would actually add so much to the game. that's what darksun was all about, you could have barren desert next to a forest full of life, or a mountain with a village on top. like can you imagine how many vets would come back if they a part of the salt flats collapsed east of 'nak from a sinkhole opening up a new explorable area with riches/gold/adventure? throw a few veins of copper/iron down there and you're good to go for like a year worth of RPTs.
I mean come on this shit is simple. some people just wantr to explore kill shit and roleplay whilst doing so with some friends, is that too much to ask?
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Post by shakes on Mar 8, 2018 18:42:29 GMT -5
I've got another mud I sporadically play that's like that ... some 200,000+ rooms, dungeons, quests, magic items ... even other planes and the Underdark to explore. Constantly being added to.
But it doesn't have permadeath, so it just ended up feeling like I'm playing in the corner with action figures rather than actually telling a story. Without the risk of permadeath, there's no adventure for me anymore. I tried Harshlands and SOI but didn't really dig either.
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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: 1,670
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Post by delerak on Mar 8, 2018 18:45:21 GMT -5
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Post by shakes on Mar 8, 2018 18:53:14 GMT -5
Which would you say are the best ones out there?
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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: 1,670
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Post by delerak on Mar 8, 2018 19:09:50 GMT -5
feature wise it's arm also because of the player base being semi-decent and steady for a while now. from what I've seen/heard the rest just can't keep players or the coding is lacking the feature set most hardcore RPI players want.
also the setting. that's a big one. Arm = Darksun arguably one of the best D&D campaigns ever conceived so I mean there is that. many other RPIs try to make their own setting which is insanely difficult to do. The most successful RPIs thus far have been SOI and Arm I think because of the content.
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Post by sirra on Mar 8, 2018 19:17:05 GMT -5
I'm guessing there's probably more to it than "spotless player killed one newbie and was instantly banned." You're right. Technically it was my second newbie. I followed all the protocols .. I wished up, well in advance, on both. The first was a prostitute I lured into a dwarven tenement and murdered. The dwarven shopkeeper NPC told the Templars who then arrested me. Half His Arm turned out for the murder of an unaffiliated whore. The second was an elven thief who spam-robbed me in Luir's. He failed and got dragged off to the jail. I looked in my inventory and noticed a bunch of stuff gone. Can I get my stuff back from that thief you just hauled off? Nope. Can I bribe a guard to let me into the cell to maim him? Nope. So I punched the half-elf stablehand in the face, got arrested for it, and went in the cell and beat the elf unconscious. Consent to maim? Nope. So I emoted that I brutally kicked his unconscious form after I took my stuff back. He emoted something about being undamaged because of his elven superiority. What? So annoyed by the poor RP, I killed him. (After wishing up that I was about to kill him.) They then wished down to complain about it being a newbie and said I was "power emoting" about kicking him on the ground. Really? Was he going to resist being kicked while he's unconscious? I then said that, if at any point during the 20 minute ordeal where I'd wished up my intentions at least 4 times you'd said it was a newbie, I'd have abandoned that. There's no newbie flag. Only they know who is a newbie unless the person just ABSOLUTELY sucks at rp. So what exactly is wishing up prior to a PK about anyway? I learned everything I needed about their attitude towards death when they let elves kill me in the mul outpost by shooting arrows into the building, restored a gick from the dead after me and a buddy killed him, and then threatened me for killing too many people when I was the Face of the Guild, you know, the Guild. That shadowy league of assassins who gets paid to kill people. A good portion of the playerbase I enjoyed playing with. Didn't really know any of them outside of their characters. They could have been someone I couldn't stand on the forum but if they played their character OK, I was fine with it. But my interactions with the majority of staff just continued to go downhill the longer I played. In all my characters, I really only ever had one I considered great (Butcher Brons). That whole story arc really went well, I thought. I received a lot of kudos for him and enjoyed the play. But I never really could recapture that magic. As far as I'm concerned, there's no game there unless you're in the Guild and actively pursuing plots. In the old days, staff wouldn't have given a shit. But now they're so paranoid about hemorrhaging players, they're a bit more sensitive to it. Typically however, staff are adept at fucking themselves. Because a brutal PKing is what most vets required, when they were still newbies, to snap out of their bullshit and learn to play the game. In fact, I cherish the first time (or couple times), when I first started playing, that another player taught me a lesson about being a thieving douche. What staff has done is deprive themselves of one more of their few remaining quality players, and almost certainly lost the newbie as well. |
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Post by shakes on Mar 8, 2018 19:18:12 GMT -5
I liked Dragonlance when I was young, Faerun when I was older. I never really fell into Darksun. Remember that setting that was like spaceships in the aether crewed by everything from drow to orcs? I'd play that mud in a heartbeat.  |
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Post by legendary on Mar 8, 2018 23:07:21 GMT -5
also the setting. that's a big one. Arm = Darksun arguably one of the best D&D campaigns ever conceived so I mean there is that. many other RPIs try to make their own setting which is insanely difficult to do. The most successful RPIs thus far have been SOI and Arm I think because of the content. Except it isn't really anymore, is it? A lot of the Dark Sun "cool" that was infused into the game has been watered down and drained away over the years. If you really take a good, hard look at the game, up to and including some of the staff side only documentation, many of the things that made it such a fun experience aren't there anymore. I don't just mean features or zones, though the game does have a lot less to offer in those regards nowadays, but the whole spirit of the game has been sucked out and replaced with a lot of nothing. The staff have tried and failed to replace old content and old themes with something new and original but couldn't get it to stick, because it stinks compared to the original content. It's a lot like going back to some childhood haunt, where you remember all the good times. You've told your friends and family about all the things you did there. It was real, it happened, you were there and you have the memories of it, but now it's old and run down. Where there used to be something to take the edge off a bad day, now it's depressing to look at. You see people hanging around and they don't seem to mind it, but that's because they've never known it to be more than what it is now. With nothing to compare it to, they don't know what they're missing. They'll never dream up a suicide kank bomb, because there's no more kanks and no more explosives. They won't get betrayed utterly by some Nilazi imposter, or trip over a piece of copper on their first planar exploration, or experience a game where you need to genuinely be careful about what you do, who you talk to or who you offend. The rewards and consequences are gone, along with motivation, excitement and every other reason for a character to get out of bed in the morning. When I think Dark Sun, what comes to mind is in no way similar to what Armageddon is now. How do you even approach a supposed Dark Sun setting where all the Big Bads are neutered non-entities, the grit has been replaced with flirty tea parties and the players have been stripped of every agency? Apathetically, I guess, based on the games lazy downward spiral. Dark Sun was about the struggle against the odds, the oppression and each desperate other out for their own grey ends and none of that is represented in the game anymore. |
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Post by shakes on Mar 8, 2018 23:31:18 GMT -5
Here's what I don't get ... I look at TMC in the top 10 and I see #2 has 141 votes, #3 has 100, all the way down the line to #10 who has 53.
Yet Armageddon has 860.
It's got hardly anything but atrociously bad reviews and the number of players on who at any given time does not warrant that many votes. Does that not seem high to anyone else? Not based on the fact that we dislike staff, but just on what we know of the playerbase?
I'm curious that I killed two people picked at random over 2 characters of mine in the span of a month and BOTH were newbies. Is there only a handful of die-hard fans left but the rest of the population is made up of newbies? Even on the "official" forum you've got a lot of the heavy posters there prefacing their statements with "I don't play anymore but here's my opinion ..."
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Post by legendary on Mar 9, 2018 0:36:07 GMT -5
As far as I know, it isn't the staff padding their numbers.
You've probably noticed that there are a lot of obsessive players who are, for karma or for lack of better sense, rabid supporters of the game and it's staff. You need only spend a few minutes in their discord to see and understand how far some of them are willing to go for the sake of the game, up to and including fraudulent voting practices for the purposes of keeping the game as visible as possible.
Way back when the game was in it's prime, there was a healthy and loyal pool of players and RPI muds were still on the rise, the game struggled to remain in the top ten, constantly. Just some food for thought.
There are a lot of GDB posters who preface with "I don't play anymore" because they don't want people to think they're playing the game, for a variety of both laughably vain and legitimate reasons. The biggest reason for this is that there are several really deranged and mentally/emotionally damaged players in the community who carry some pretty problematic grudges against others.
8bitgrandpa, for example, has something of a notorious reputation for abusing ooc knowledge and forming obsessive/unhealthy hate grudges against players that they would pursue in and out of game, all because of what happens during the course of role play. They've actually caused a few people to fade from the community or pretend to be alumni to avoid having to deal with their special brand of batty.
In that specific case, it's really well documented staff side but largely ignored because of the players inability to follow through on their grudges with any success, but a lot of those types don't get the kind of coverage they deserve. This is in large part because of how free staff are (and always have been) with using account comments to bury or punish players they feel have slighted them in some way, be it real or imagined. Bhag, Krrx and Sanvean were all pretty well-known for it, as was Nyr, Nergal and some current members of the staff roster, like Seidir and to a lesser degree, Rathustra.
The water gets muddied to the point where no one really knows what's legit and what's the fallout of someones temper tantrum.
Basically, if someone is posting on the GDB, there is a pretty high chance they've got an active or at least semi-active account, no matter what shadowy sneaking games they think they're winning at.
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