Why'd you quit/walk away/get burnt out from Arm?

Been saying it for years man.

Very great and awesome point, Anaiah.

In my opinion, it should be mandatory required for Imms to play. And let them be active Imms at the time. Abuses happen, but they also get caught. Even in case of Kivan and Uruz, Uruz never used his knowledge to fuck somebody up, nor did he increase any of his skills and spells and such similar shit. The days of Bhag and Halaster are over and any abuse of "that" magnitude will be caught on. These days, abuse is a little bit more insidious. But removing ability to play will make things only worse, not better. It will make people who love the game, the gameplay, and the spirit of the game to say fuck it, and return to being players. Or worse, remain Imms and slowly slowly drift away to a point of leaving Immage and Arming as whole. Or even worse yet, getting jaded by talking to those imms who are already jaded, and then gradually turning into Nyr.

Anyone here ever witnessed a change in psyche of a person who becomes a cop? In a year, their asshole stat increases five fold. For a good and understandable reason. If you sever an Imm's ability to remember what it is to be player, something like that will happen to them eventually.

Conversely, how are you supposed to know that those 10 complaining players are not full of shit in their complaint, if you aren't allowed to be a player and experience the game from the player's POV? I can see it from both perspectives. People say "oh this staffer is so far removed from the needs of the players she's clueless and needs to be fired." And then other people say "oh this staffer is obviously playing that character as his PC, and since he's a staffer he knows all the game secrets and that's not far and he should be fired."

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

That's why I think it should be mandatory that staffers play a PC but that their PC not be involved in anything their staff-led clans are involved in, and that their staff-self never be logged in at the same time as their PC. Plus I agree with the current rules that staffers aren't allowed to play sponsored roles. I think that's what the rules are supposed to be now, except the "mandatory that they play a PC" part. I really think Nyr should have to play as maybe an independent nobody hunter out of Red Storm or Allanak at least an hour a RL week. I think that'd help him "connect" with the players better.

Transparency: I have been a staff member in other games. Never any RPIs though. My perspective is as a player of Arm, an ex-staffer of other games, and a reader of game forums such as this.

arm is a rpi

just was making sure you knew in case you wanted to go back and edit but ok i guess we can consider this to be an environment where you roleplay joe schmoe player

Game is stagnant. Nothing new really happens. I like games where my character can change the world. I got a noble role once, read the documentation, and it was like... shit the docs are exactly the same as they were fucking years ago. Why bother with a social role when everyone is going to stay enemies for years, no political change, and trying to play a diplomat is guaranteed to fail because it goes against the docs? That was the breaking point for me. I tried to make that character work, but couldn't and just stored and played mundane indies since then.

Codebase of Arm works against roleplaying. There's twinky shit that's part of the game and twinky shit that's not. Sleep in the 'rinth ~= death sentence or being stripped naked by a NPC. So nobody sleeps and that's perfectly fine? Imbalanced economy. Having a crafting skill, but not being able to craft. 40 year olds in a dirt poor world not knowing how to cook their own damn steak.

Account notes are harsh and unfair. I looked at it once and it just stood out. No positive notes for the weeks of consistent roleplay, but a note for a temporary side thing from that roleplay that made someone laugh. Bad account notes were complete NEWBIE mistakes or IN CHARACTER. Fine if you want to bitch in-game about my AOD dwarf going down to Storm. It was a damn dwarf, doing a focus related thing. Why put it on my permanent record when he's doing what's completely logical for him? Staff are just going to read that as twinky when out of context. Just fucking animate a clan boss and contact my char to whip or torture him.

I don't care about karma. Only played the karma roles once to try and die almost instantly and go back to mundanes. But the unfair treatment is so discouraging when you put hours into that stuff.

I tolerate the game every now and then, but a week of playing makes me back out.

I don't care that much about staff playing psions and skirting some rules. As long as they're not involved in PvP. Staff, if anyone, are best suited to the psions. But it's lame for the GM of a game to play the high level characters. Leave the high level stuff purely for players. Oh but it's a thematic thing, where the majority of characters are helpless, some take on a helpless BDSM feel.