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Post by lyse on May 14, 2018 6:08:39 GMT -5
I’m not ready to throw socializers under the bus or blame them for the decline of the game. They are an important part of the game. What is more disturbing is they are playing a different game than everybody else. In my opinion, they are taking up the bulk of staff resources because there is no system in place for that kind of play.
I stand behind the idea that Arm is a “Bro” game and a “Lords and Ladies” game. The two just don’t meet, whereas a successful game would have them meet somewhere in the middle. In Arm, they don’t have to. In fact, if you were to come into contact with a Lord and Lady type player, they just wouldn’t play with you. So there is no place for middle of the road kind of players. Those are the type of players that leave because it appears there isn’t much of a place for them.
I’d even argue that a social type can be the same thing as a power gamer. They also can put in the same amount of time as a power gamer. Again, that middle ground is missing. So you have a game filled with two types of extreme players. One invests an unnatural amount of time to become physically powerful and one spends a ridiculous amount of time becoming socially powerful. Meanwhile your casual player will always bow out in the face of that.
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julio
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 270
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Post by julio on May 14, 2018 8:16:13 GMT -5
I’m not ready to throw socializers under the bus or blame them for the decline of the game. They are an important part of the game. What is more disturbing is they are playing a different game than everybody else. In my opinion, they are taking up the bulk of staff resources because there is no system in place for that kind of play. I stand behind the idea that Arm is a “Bro” game and a “Lords and Ladies” game. The two just don’t meet, whereas a successful game would have them meet somewhere in the middle. In Arm, they don’t have to. In fact, if you were to come into contact with a Lord and Lady type player, they just wouldn’t play with you. So there is no place for middle of the road kind of players. Those are the type of players that leave because it appears there isn’t much of a place for them. I’d even argue that a social type can be the same thing as a power gamer. They also can put in the same amount of time as a power gamer. Again, that middle ground is missing. So you have a game filled with two types of extreme players. One invests an unnatural amount of time to become physically powerful and one spends a ridiculous amount of time becoming socially powerful. Meanwhile your casual player will always bow out in the face of that. I play middle ground. And I'm a casual player. And I'm disenchanted. The secrets bother me. If everyone knows it, its not a secret except to newbies who are at a distinct disadvantage.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,324
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Post by mehtastic on May 14, 2018 9:01:44 GMT -5
Arm is a poorly made game on practically every level, except for the diehards, for whom Arm is the easiest game ever made.
Features found in almost every RP game to attract and keep casual players are absent from Arm. Arm has no XP for RP system, so RP exists in a weird state where it is enforced yet not encouraged. Arm has no messenger system, because illiteracy. Arm has no diminishing returns for hardcore players to keep them on an even playing field with the casuals. Skill timers encourage stretching out your online time as much as possible. The world is massive for an RP game, and so many rooms are private, encouraging people to hide away from others instead of making themselves available for RP.
Arm's survival strategy is to keep the diehards. They are the ones who evangelize for the game the hardest on other websites, and will support staff almost always. Doing something to help casual players hurts the diehards and drives them away.
Want to RP casually? Find another game. Arm is not for you.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2018 11:12:56 GMT -5
I’m not ready to throw socializers under the bus or blame them for the decline of the game. They are an important part of the game. What is more disturbing is they are playing a different game than everybody else. In my opinion, they are taking up the bulk of staff resources because there is no system in place for that kind of play. I stand behind the idea that Arm is a “Bro” game and a “Lords and Ladies” game. The two just don’t meet, whereas a successful game would have them meet somewhere in the middle. In Arm, they don’t have to. In fact, if you were to come into contact with a Lord and Lady type player, they just wouldn’t play with you. So there is no place for middle of the road kind of players. Those are the type of players that leave because it appears there isn’t much of a place for them. I’d even argue that a social type can be the same thing as a power gamer. They also can put in the same amount of time as a power gamer. Again, that middle ground is missing. So you have a game filled with two types of extreme players. One invests an unnatural amount of time to become physically powerful and one spends a ridiculous amount of time becoming socially powerful. Meanwhile your casual player will always bow out in the face of that. I play middle ground. And I'm a casual player. And I'm disenchanted. The secrets bother me. If everyone knows it, its not a secret except to newbies who are at a distinct disadvantage. Newbies who wont socialize for info, and wont research are at a disadvantage.
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Post by lyse on May 14, 2018 12:09:29 GMT -5
I don’t think Arm is a poorly designed game at all. The main draw of an Arm is the power of your imagination. That’s the beauty of a text based game, it’s flexible and very easy to add to and change. That’s it.
The problem here is it sells itself as something it’s not. It’s not flexible, you are very limited in what you can do, where you can go, what you can be...I can go on and on about what you are not allowed to do.
The problem is video games have evolved while Arm hasn’t very much. Arm attracted players that would be playing Call of Duty, Ark, Conan, EvE online, etc. Kids today are going to be drawn to those types of games, because they fill that niche in a better way. That leaves players that are growing up or have grown up, jobs, families, etc. They’re just not going to put that kind of energy into the game like they used to. That left a vacuum to be filled with a certain type of player that does have the time to play all the time and typically knows each other, which makes a world that isn’t as newbie friendly as it could be.
So in the end, you’re left with that core group. They’re usually very hardcore too. New players jump in can’t quite fit in or were expecting something else, don’t find it and leave.
I read a subreddit a few months ago about some woman that started playing in the Byn and got kicked out because she didn’t play enough. A staffer showed up and couldn’t really even deny that it happened. I read it knowing something like that happened. The only thing they could really say was you could’ve filed a complaint. A casual player isn’t going to file a complaint, they’re just going to leave. And we all know what any kind of complaint is worth.
A casual player just plays to be someone else for a little while, maybe go on an imaginary adventure and enjoy themselves. Arm just doesn’t do that for many people and there’s really no reason that it can’t. It reads like that’s what happens but when you get in the game that’s actually what rarely happens. So you get the bros and you get the lords and ladies.
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julio
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 270
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Post by julio on May 14, 2018 12:46:12 GMT -5
I read a subreddit a few months ago about some woman that started playing in the Byn and got kicked out because she didn’t play enough. A staffer showed up and couldn’t really even deny that it happened. I read it knowing something like that happened. The only thing they could really say was you could’ve filed a complaint. A casual player isn’t going to file a complaint, they’re just going to leave. And we all know what any kind of complaint is worth. This also happened to me. I created a PC, logged on casually, once or twice a week, random times. I always had people to RP with, the Byn was always active. But I rarely saw the same folks twice. This was a new account, having been banned before, so I had to play like I was a newbie. At the end of the IC year I was kicked out of the byn for not making any of the "outings". I DID send in a complaint! "noted" was the fucking resolution notes. I suicided the PC by just walking out of the gates until I ran out of stamina and left the game running when going to bed. When I requested account notes to play a Drovian many months later I was denied because I suspiciously suicided a character right after getting kicked out of the byn. Sooo. I worked harder at building Karma to play that Drovian and BOOM, The guild is gone. Other muds: New World's is a fucking carebear city galore with stupid stupid fucking RP, glitter, sparkles, and mud sex with my-little-fucking-pony.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,324
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Post by mehtastic on May 14, 2018 14:04:43 GMT -5
Arm was a well-designed game in 1998. It is a poorly-designed game in 2018.
It's partly because gamers have different expectations. It's also partly because even within the MU* genre, there has been a sort of evolution which Arm has never embraced. Staff just never saw the need to add features to enhance roleplay, like put building power in the hands of players or adopt an impartial coded system for discovering information. They have shrunk the game, removed options, and pulled and condensed more power, and thus, a greater workload, to themselves. They've made themselves the final arbiter of everything.
Why have mastercrafts the way they are? Just give players access to building tools and writing standards. If they make a steel dildo and write 'lol' for the description, take away their build command. Why make the player wait a month, usually longer, to get their stupid item?
Why have information discovery the way it is? Staff arbitrarily decide to answer a request with information or a Find out IC. How about a coded system that takes queries and pulls up canned information for staff to send out? These types of requests take weeks but could literally take hours, if the staff as a whole cared to do any world-building.
Why does an RPI have a failure-based skill system, when all it does is encourage grinding to the point that people feel they have to be at a minimum level before they interact with others?
This is the shit I'm talking about. Arm is poorly designed because it fails to catch up with the rest of MUDs, let alone the rest of games. It is stuck in a distant past where Arm was the top dog. The fact remains that there are bigger and newer roleplaying MU*s out there with far more players than Arm that people just don't hear about thanks to the lack of exposure they get.
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julio
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 270
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Post by julio on May 14, 2018 21:10:47 GMT -5
Arm was a well-designed game in 1998. It is a poorly-designed game in 2018. It's partly because gamers have different expectations. It's also partly because even within the MU* genre, there has been a sort of evolution which Arm has never embraced. Staff just never saw the need to add features to enhance roleplay, like put building power in the hands of players or adopt an impartial coded system for discovering information. They have shrunk the game, removed options, and pulled and condensed more power, and thus, a greater workload, to themselves. They've made themselves the final arbiter of everything. Why have mastercrafts the way they are? Just give players access to building tools and writing standards. If they make a steel dildo and write 'lol' for the description, take away their build command. Why make the player wait a month, usually longer, to get their stupid item? Why have information discovery the way it is? Staff arbitrarily decide to answer a request with information or a Find out IC. How about a coded system that takes queries and pulls up canned information for staff to send out? These types of requests take weeks but could literally take hours, if the staff as a whole cared to do any world-building. Why does an RPI have a failure-based skill system, when all it does is encourage grinding to the point that people feel they have to be at a minimum level before they interact with others? This is the shit I'm talking about. Arm is poorly designed because it fails to catch up with the rest of MUDs, let alone the rest of games. It is stuck in a distant past where Arm was the top dog. The fact remains that there are bigger and newer roleplaying MU*s out there with far more players than Arm that people just don't hear about thanks to the lack of exposure they get. What is bigger and better with permadeath?
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,324
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Post by mehtastic on May 15, 2018 7:41:05 GMT -5
Bigger
Better
Permadeath
Pick two.
Look at Sindome, Arx, Cybersphere, and Harshlands for a start. Those are all different kinds of games, but they are all better than Armageddon, although Sindome has a Nyr-lite on staff. Besides that, I'm not a search engine, bro. Search on mud connector, or musoapbox if you don't mind trying a MUSH.
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julio
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 270
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Post by julio on May 15, 2018 15:31:53 GMT -5
Bigger Better Permadeath Pick two. Look at Sindome, Arx, Cybersphere, and Harshlands for a start. Those are all different kinds of games, but they are all better than Armageddon, although Sindome has a Nyr-lite on staff. Besides that, I'm not a search engine, bro. Search on mud connector, or musoapbox if you don't mind trying a MUSH. Sindome sucks. The others I've never heard of.
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faroukel
Displaced Tuluki
What's a story without a villain?
Posts: 201
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Post by faroukel on May 18, 2018 11:24:13 GMT -5
Dang, never heard of Harshlands? Thought that was an RPI staple.
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Post by lyse on May 18, 2018 17:14:46 GMT -5
Since Arx keeps coming up I'll point out what Arx does that makes it a great game that Arm doesn't.
It does a lot of things I've been pointing out Arm should do for years now. The creator of Arx really understands text based gaming. I told him when he opened it he had something special, it was the type of game I hoped I'd find in Arm.
It's a MUSH, yeah yeah, but it uses a MUD codebase, Evannia. Combat is coded though. The biggest slog in a MUSH is combat, problem solved.
It's an episodic, story arc based game. It provides a backdrop of what's going on, yet what your character does effects the overall arc of the game. The important thing is the plot is always moving forward. If people fuck up, there are consequences. If people don't fuck up, there's no punishment or nonresponse.
You are pretty aware of events because players can put out there what they want known and it's easily accessible to everyone. There are secrets, but everything isn't a secret.
It has a social system as well as a combat system so players that aren't combat oriented have something to do while they're playing mean girls.
It has a task system and they're optional. Each character has roleplaying options that they can do to better their faction or own gain.
It's roster based, there's no waiting for an app unless you want to create your own character. So your character already has a place in the world, goals and ideals. You are allowed to put your own spin on a character's background, but it's a very easy game to get into. So a casual player can pick up a character see what it's about with no problem, there's no barrier to entry.
The staff is accessible, there's only like 5 of them with about 100 players and they'll still make time for you. I pointed something out to Apos and BAM...coded it and built it in about a day, complete with a background of why it's there and then I had my own personal story and problem to deal with on top of the other problems my character had to deal with. I pointed out something else about my character some time later, Bam...fixed it, immediately. He's constantly adding to the game, it's still in beta. If he sees a problem with something he actively works on it.
It's not a perfect game, it has flaws, but it does things RPIs should strive for. It does the most important thing right though, it tells a story and it lets you be a part of it.
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pinkerdlu
Shartist
The evil bad guy of a desert sex simulator. Real Necker
Posts: 521
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Post by pinkerdlu on May 18, 2018 17:24:33 GMT -5
Bigger Better Permadeath Pick two. Look at Sindome, Arx, Cybersphere, and Harshlands for a start. Those are all different kinds of games, but they are all better than Armageddon, Nope. Most MUDs (non-RPIs) without permadeath are absolute garbage. I tend to agree with lyse on the 'bro' vs. 'lord and ladies' game dynamic, however. There are definitely a lot of improvements that could be made. I don't think I've heard of Arx so I might check that out. (shit Arx looks cool. I have a special place in my heart for MUXs, havent played one since Firan)
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julio
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 270
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Post by julio on May 19, 2018 0:05:31 GMT -5
Arx Does look cool! I'll make a character.
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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 16, 2020 21:44:44 GMT -5
Video dropping tonight. I was driving home from the gym so its quick and pretty shit, will try to get something better for my next one.
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