Random thoughts and comments

But apparently homeboy was prolific enough for Ikthe to trust him twice in a row with Apocalypse? Sometimes I wonder what gets said in dms for these mistakes of investiture to be made. Exactly how much smoke is blown up an ass? With choices like that, no wonder there's nobody playing Apocalypse.

Lets go ahead and tease this apart.

Oenom's claims are...

1. Staff are introducing a poison that adds new functionality beyond what the current code allows.
2. The poison is not live, but being tested.
3. Player driven initiative.
4. Supported by staff and players.
5. FOIC exists to promote a sense of discovery in the game.
6. Oenom doesn't like the assumptions of players.

I'm curious what misinformation Oenom believes they've corrected by making this post. They didn't post anything that contradicted GreenTransient's message beyond asserting that the new poison isn't live yet. I'm going to briefly address these claims one by one.

1. Staff are introducing a poison that adds new functionality beyond what the current code allows.

Why? Does 'new functionality' mean you're making an existing poison more dangerous than it was before? What makes you think the game needs this? GreenTransient is right. Only a few classes have brew, cures are harder to make or buy than ever given the dwindling playerbase, and poisons have always been a dreaded method of PvP in what's already a broken and imbalanced game where power is monopolized by those who get the right roles, classes, or know everything about the code.

2. The poison is not live, but being tested.
3. Player driven initiative.

So you don't listen to players 99% of the time, but when they want to introduce a poison to the game that requires new functionality/code... you give the green light? Hmm, sounds legit. I encourage the players that "drove" this initiative to come here and speak up about their incredible efforts to introduce something new and cool to the game.

4. Supported by staff and players.

You're dumbasses. Sorry, but adding new poisons and spells to your game that barely manages 30 player peaks nowadays is stupid.

5. FOIC exists to promote a sense of discovery in the game.

This would've been a more compelling point of discussion, I don't know... 15 years ago? You know, when people still had some semblance of trust and sincerity when interacting with the gameworld. Nowadays, FOIC is rightfully recognized as a form of gatekeeping. It's monopolizing knowledge, especially when considering a fucking poison. Yeah, I'll truly have an incredible sense of discovery when I'm inflicted by a deadly poison that I have no clue how to react to or cure. Can't wait to invest another 1000 hours into a character for that to happen.

6. Oenom doesn't like the assumptions of players.

The feeling is mutual, because I don't like the assumptions of Armageddon staff.

I'm sorry that as a player, my first reaction isn't "WOOOW UHH... THEY'RE DOING SOMETHING COOL!".

I'm sorry that as players, we have correctly identified and verified a history of staff cheating and staff friends reaping the benefits.

By obscuring information from the playerbase, you're making sure that every staff member and every player who "tested" this poison, or aided in it's creation, will know how it works. The minority of players that aren't connected to others through cliques or discord groups, will surely be left out of the loop. And they'll be the ones paying when the first staff avatar or staff friend makes use of this SUPER COOL new poison once it gets in game. A highly anticipated event indeed.

Since the departure of staffers like Shalooonsh and Shabago, I've been totally unimpressed with the management of the game. It really was a chance to turn things around and make things right with disenfranchised players. Instead, you're seeing the staff team dwindle and try not to shake the boat, as they realize the dream is dead. And they try, tenaciously, to hold onto the tatters of what once was a great game.

Product of the times. Armageddon used to be hack-and-slash which is why it was made on Diku in the first place. Then they decided to turn it into an RP game and add custom code onto Diku because there weren't really other options at the time: it was either that, be a MUSH, or make an entirely new code base. Arm Reborn was going to change all that, and focus on making an engine specifically for a crunchy RP game, but honestly it's probably for the best that the project failed. If you think Shalooonsh was a fucking weirdo in our timeline, imagine the timeline where Arm 2 was completed and Shalooonsh's catgirl race existed.

I honestly have no idea, I just think the system needs to have roleplay at the forefront.

Maybe at the risk of killing myself because they are weird to me, systems like the one Inquisition or even Haven use?

I have my own complaints with them, generally they lock highly specific social things behind mechanics (A -this race here- can never become -This position here-, when the races aren't like fantasy races...just real races. If you play a -Not barbarian- that passes as a -Not white- you technically can't ever be -position- because....reasons???) but they have some systems in place that are very interesting and supportive of roleplay (Roleplay XP being one, for any who like to be hermits go fuck yourself. I say this as someone who likes being a hermit)

Haven has systems, and even Inquisiton, where you can description edit items. There's no once per month custom item bullshit 'I have to mastercraft 14 times over the course of 32 months' to unlock 'slightly better sword making' you just...take an item, rebuy the item or find someone who can craft, and congrats your sword looks nicer. 

These are very surface level things though and I haven't given both systems deep dives. Both of those games have their own issues (Inquisition apparently has crazy ass staffers, Haven has furry rape erp and from my understanding is a dead game) but when I surface level think "Roleplaying game mechanics that don't suck" these pop into my head. At the end of the day the borderline minimum you need is an emote command, and Armageddon basically has an emote command and that's about it.


Edit: To further my 'armageddon's system sucks' idea, it boils down to what the system encourages and how the game formulates itself.

Why do roleplaying game have perma death?
Generally, I assume it's to give you a reason to want to hold onto a character.
Would you be willing to hold onto a character if you could just be back to where you were the next minute if you died? Either due to skills being super easy to level or otherwise.
I assume some people would assume or think 'No I'd be totally fine dying then!' (Which isn't true, and Inquisition has a method of getting exp back on death. Someone suggested this in Arm forever ago and got shit on)
So you make the skill leveling ABSURDELY slow, by design. You put in hazards to the world to make death a real risk. Combat is incredibly difficult without the skills as well.

So you have a game where death means the very end to your character, combat is difficult without the skills, and leveling takes forever.
So you have people who when they do do combat, they tend to go full hard into it. They have to spend a lot of time grinding this combat because it takes forever (And Arm doesnt' tell you when you get fails, so you do it *A LOT*).
This means your combat PCs are dick mad about their combat skills and want to use them all the time.
This means your noncombat PCs just hide all day, because all of the combat PCs they could hire are sadly only on at these specific 2 and a half hours, they can't hire npc guards, or the people they can hire are crazy people who might eat their heart for no reason.

This formulates an awkward ass game world. This is ignoring the 'Please hate everyone to your left and right' lore we have going on.

So whats the solution? Naysaying and doomsaying generally doesn't help much.
I've already done the 'I don't know' answer but surely there's something else in my brain.


I honestly don't know you'd need to change so many integral systems.

You can't change the systems in the game that suck and are old without the old guard/people in their literal 60's complaining, usually their complaints ranging from (Honest to god) 'But the grittyness!' or my favorite 'But its been like this forever!'
I show up to the DnD table with my eyebrow raised because each player has to smash their cock with a mallet to truly show that they are dedicated gamers and when you suggest maybe we don't smash our cocks with hammers you get backlash.

I generally want to roleplay in my roleplaying games. Armageddon has largely become a coded nightmare for me. I play a character, I get their skills good, then I go and act as a human being. This doesn't feel like roleplaying to me. It feels like I'm playing a skillset and not a person. Is this solely my fault? Well, the game isn't helping. I can't pull up and just be 'Amos the shoe maker I make shoes and live off of that'. I have to branch X into Y or spend a spec app unlocking Z, I can't go back to my small abode on A street because it doesn't exist and will never exist and if I tried to make it exist I'd have so many fucking strings to pull only for staff to say no because you can't own permanent housing, and god forbid you play a Not-Human and do this (Ignoring the countless non humans with permanent structures you can see down the road).
The game is outright hostile to finding places to roleplay with people. Each city has multiple bars, multiple reasons not to go to those bars, multiple types of people I'm outright not supposed to interact with. These can be bridged but if 5 people in Allanak are all mages hanging out in the mage bar that's probably burnt down right now or some shit, I can't bullshit a reason to go into there like how Lord Fale can walk into the Gaj and we all go 'hee hee ha ha'.
Every roleplaying Mud that gives any semblance of a fuck has a where command.
Every roleplaying Mud that gives any semblance of a fuck asks people to not randomly murder other people.
Every roleplaying Mud that gives any semblance of a fuck has a staff discussion system faster than one message per week (Staff, I'll give you kudos on this, the request tool has been surprisingly less aids recently with less bullshit.)


I dont have a place to post this so I'll do it here.
When you make changes to a game, or anything I guess but lets say games (especially roleplaying games like MUDs or Tabletops)
You should ask two questions and answer them, always.
1: Is the change fun?
2: Who the fuck asked?
If the person who asked is 'The staffer who wants to make the change', maybe float the idea around first to people who aren't you before doing it.


Note: Changes that are fun can be 'harmful to the players'. Contrary to popular belief, I like going outside and fighting stuff.
Let's look at the brew code changes.
1: Is it fun?
I think maybe. Leaning yes. There were some issues with it I had, that I think were basically 'this mechanic is broke a little fix it', that if fixed in the first few months I'd have thought 'Well this is a good system'. As is they didn't change shit for years and it was ass.
2: Who asked?
I think just about no one. I can't think of any complaints about brew. If anything it exasperated the issue of reminding me: So many plants are useless.

Let's look at the poison/brew changes that are newer (Poison levels)
1: Is it fun?
To me, hell no.
2: Who asked?
Literally. Who asked.

Link me

Not possible to link the Reddit thread anymore since Bebop deleted it after the r/MUD mods locked it. The TL;DR is the same story she told here: Shalooonsh groomed her, abused and stalked her for over a decade, the staff banned her, then Armageddon kicked him out and suffered no further repercussions for having sheltered him all this time.

This reminded me of that infamous "Ender and his wife" post