Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,515 
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Post by Jeshin on May 9, 2014 18:07:57 GMT -5
gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,47416.0.html --- DO NOT CLICK LINK BECAUSE IT WILL SHOW YOU CAME FROM HERE Basically the staff are making citywide changes, just like the coded guard barriers. Now one of my friends pointed something out and I shall share it with you because it is more insightful than one might realize at first brush. "Let's change the taverns, city, and 'improve' things because we feel like it." Whereas a PC could never do any of this shit ever.This is the great staff blindness... The HRPT with the volcano and the war shouldn't have been the high point of a railroad plot, it should have been the scripted BEGINNING of the plot. Allanak and Tuluk should both go through changes preparing for the impending round 2 war. Instead of automated staff changes to the city (which they are going to do anyway) they should use their planned changes as PLOTLINE FODDER FOR FUCKING PCS. Tell clan leaders that higher ups want them to do this, give them some guidelines, let them go fucking get it done with some RP and some murder and some teamwork. For Christ sakes, why is changing the gameworld have to be some staff intervention? Why can't the staff even go, this is what we want, lets let the players do some plotlines on it because they're constantly trying to affect the gameworld and maybe just maybe letting them do it when we had a planned update to a city anyway is a clever thing to do... Maybe, just maybe, it will show that staff is at least willing to provide the illusion of freedom and change. Which, let us be honest, is all some of us want. If a staffer sekritly planned to build a tavern that catered to middle class or low class anyway. But they asked your Kadian or your Kuraci or your Noble to plan one, get funding, create alliances, and make it happen. Would it matter to you at all that they planned to do it whether you took them up on it or not? Is it SO much for the staff to let some players have an input on the design of the new tavern so that the playerbase feels like it accomplished something? Why is the most fulfilling part of a game, leaving a mark on the world, being so obviously overlooked in situations like this. Where it would take almost 0 staff effort to let PCs do the leg work and generate plots before they implement their changes?
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MartenBroadcloak
Displaced Tuluki
It's not a shit post if you spell check (tm)
Posts: 370
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Post by MartenBroadcloak on May 9, 2014 18:09:36 GMT -5
BASTARD! I want my own thread. How dare you notice this at the same time as me?!
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Post by jcarter on May 9, 2014 18:54:07 GMT -5
ANOTHER SLAPFIGHT?  |
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Post by BitterFlashback on May 9, 2014 19:12:58 GMT -5
Why is the most fulfilling part of a game, leaving a mark on the world, being so obviously overlooked in situations like this. Where it would take almost 0 staff effort to let PCs do the leg work and generate plots before they implement their changes? Like I've said forever: if they let you have a hand in it, they can't take full credit for it if it is successful. they can still blame you if it fails because we're all ingrates and theyre unpaid volunteers. |
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Post by snorpborp on May 9, 2014 20:11:21 GMT -5
GDB jimmies has been rustled
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 9, 2014 21:25:05 GMT -5
Congrats on stomping out the history that was player created (The Firestorm), ignoring player outcry on it, continuing to listen to outcry and responding with something like 'Yeah, but we gave you a week to adjust to the changes, rite? So we're totally cool now', and then blithely continuing. Enjoy the month of spiked logins, and whenever that round of people gets the chance to see all the changes, ask yourself why it turns back into a ghost town. >.< Crossposting on both the Tuluk threads.  |
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Hardboiled
Clueless newb
Eggs, their good for you.
Posts: 116
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Post by Hardboiled on May 10, 2014 8:42:56 GMT -5
I feel that we should give credit where credit is due. First of all the size of the city and its design has been a major complaint for people for a long time, I'm glad they are fixing it. The staff including Nyr deserve some applause for the work being done there. Good job  However, as I've said before one of the main reasons there are no people in Tuluk and its because there are no plots. In allanak you don't need permission from a templar to go kill or fuck up joe blow byner or fancy pants noble. In tuluk you can't do shit without staff AND templar blessing, there is no real crime and even the surrounding wilderness is controlled by the mindbending templars. Have the fixed this with the new templars? Maybe, they all seem to be jihean templars with some mindbending powers, probably or should I say hopefully nothing as strong as the plot killing Qoriya, of course qoriya might still be unfortunately lurking in the shadows so until she is gone, i wouldn't bother losing any more character down there. I think reducing the city size is a step in the right direction but honestly all they've ever needed to do is get rid of the mind benders, and have templars in general loose control of crime in the city including what happens outside its gates. That alone would have made it a much more interesting place to play.As for historic significance...mm, well I don't see why they can't just relocate the tavern but either way, I wouldn't let historic sentiment get in the way of much needed progress. I'm glad gypsy lands and gypsies are more or less gone after all. Good riddance, out with the old and in with the new, and all that jazz! |
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Post by jcarter on May 10, 2014 9:51:10 GMT -5
lol so many things wrong with this. i would expect this kind of thing from a hack-and-slash mud or WoW, but a RPI? staff are just deleting taverns from the game without even any effort. at least make a plot or HRPT where these places get destroyed. suddenly adding a new tavern and deleting an old one steeped in player history is such a shitty and lazy design decision: what happened to be the change you want to see? if staff want a new "middle" tavern then implement changes in the place and create an IC reason for the management to change. have animations of NPCs getting into fights, hire a PC to assassinate an imm-animated NPC in there, etc, something to give the owner an excuse to change and class up the place.
I couldn't care less about resizing Tuluk. It seems like such a minor tweak and insignificant issue with Tuluk. i wish I could be a fly on the wall in some of these meetings because I can't wrap my mind around how they would work. 'hey guys, you know what would really make players enjoy Tuluk and shift more of the pbase there? shutting down taverns and removing roads from the game.' some of the player comments in the GDB thread had me laughing though especially the player who said that the size was the reason why they didn't play in Tuluk and now they're definitely going to give it a try. seriously? the reason why you didn't play in Tuluk was sometimes you would have to move an extra 5-6 rooms?
I think what really blows my mind in all of this is the sheer amount of retconning and ham-fisted implementation of all these changes to Tuluk. it's so god awful and comes down to HIGH TEMPLAR/CITY OVERLORD/IMPORTANT NPC declares that HLUM NOBLES ARE OUT/ONLY ONE TEMPLAR ORDER/SHADOW ARTISTRY IS IN. no IC background, no actual plot lead ups, nothing coming in from players, just forced 'cultural' changes. because as we know if there's one thing the playerbase love it's sweeping changes to parts of the game without any input from them.
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MartenBroadcloak
Displaced Tuluki
It's not a shit post if you spell check (tm)
Posts: 370
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Post by MartenBroadcloak on May 10, 2014 11:22:26 GMT -5
However, as I've said before one of the main reasons there are no people in Tuluk and its because there are no plots. In allanak you don't need permission from a templar to go kill or fuck up joe blow byner or fancy pants noble. In tuluk you can't do shit without staff AND templar blessing, there is no real crime and even the surrounding wilderness is controlled by the mindbending templars. I have always thought this to be one of the major issues with Tuluk. It's not so much that you can't even take a piss in some random commoners teapot without getting hauled off and questioned over it, like it actually should matter to the Templarate at all (It really shouldn't) but you can't even -think- about doing it. And God help you if you want to set off a major thing, like, God Forbid, a player driven RPT or something! HORRORS! There is like a sixteen phase approval process through both IC and OOC channels then!! (find patron lord or lady, get them to like you by serving them, possibly lifeswear your life away, get them to vouch for you to make you important, ask them to ask the Templarate if you can host some kind of thing or ask yourself if you're really well liked snowflake, send in staff report asking, wait for yours and theirs to come back with an okay, if not an okay find out what's wrong, attempt to adjust plans to suit the replies..)
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MartenBroadcloak
Displaced Tuluki
It's not a shit post if you spell check (tm)
Posts: 370
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Post by MartenBroadcloak on May 10, 2014 11:27:45 GMT -5
no IC background, no actual plot lead ups, nothing coming in from players, just forced 'cultural' changes. because as we know if there's one thing the playerbase love it's sweeping changes to parts of the game without any input from them. You can tell they are scrambling to save certain things from total meltdown, like Tuluk, and yet at the same time have zero trust in the general player base to do anything or provide input. It's rather sad that it would seem they missed the point entirely. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2014 11:27:53 GMT -5
I have always thought this to be one of the major issues with Tuluk. It's not so much that you can't even take a piss in some random commoners teapot without getting hauled off and questioned over it, like it actually should matter to the Templarate at all (It really shouldn't) but you can't even -think- about doing it. And God help you if you want to set off a major thing, like, God Forbid, a player driven RPT or something! HORRORS! There is like a sixteen phase approval process through both IC and OOC channels then!! (find patron lord or lady, get them to like you by serving them, possibly lifeswear your life away, get them to vouch for you to make you important, ask them to ask the Templarate if you can host some kind of thing or ask yourself if you're really well liked snowflake, send in staff report asking, wait for yours and theirs to come back with an okay, if not an okay find out what's wrong, attempt to adjust plans to suit the replies..)
Okay, part one: I could not agree more with. Part two, that depends largely on what you're wanting to do, RPT-wise. I had a pc before I ever joined staff, who just got a job with Kurac and turned that into a regular RPT as hostess, complete with pc bardic performance and the attendance of 8-9 people on average. If it's something that will actually 'change' anything or requires anything special, new, or custom, you'll have to go through that, definitely, but frankly, that's a problem in a lot of places, and part of the reason why plots in general tend to be stagnant once you get past the low-end style plots. |
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MartenBroadcloak
Displaced Tuluki
It's not a shit post if you spell check (tm)
Posts: 370
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Post by MartenBroadcloak on May 10, 2014 11:32:54 GMT -5
I have always thought this to be one of the major issues with Tuluk. It's not so much that you can't even take a piss in some random commoners teapot without getting hauled off and questioned over it, like it actually should matter to the Templarate at all (It really shouldn't) but you can't even -think- about doing it. And God help you if you want to set off a major thing, like, God Forbid, a player driven RPT or something! HORRORS! There is like a sixteen phase approval process through both IC and OOC channels then!! (find patron lord or lady, get them to like you by serving them, possibly lifeswear your life away, get them to vouch for you to make you important, ask them to ask the Templarate if you can host some kind of thing or ask yourself if you're really well liked snowflake, send in staff report asking, wait for yours and theirs to come back with an okay, if not an okay find out what's wrong, attempt to adjust plans to suit the replies..)
Okay, part one: I could not agree more with. Part two, that depends largely on what you're wanting to do, RPT-wise. I had a pc before I ever joined staff, who just got a job with Kurac and turned that into a regular RPT as hostess, complete with pc bardic performance and the attendance of 8-9 people on average. If it's something that will actually 'change' anything or requires anything special, new, or custom, you'll have to go through that, definitely, but frankly, that's a problem in a lot of places, and part of the reason why plots in general tend to be stagnant once you get past the low-end style plots. I have a nightmare story from Tuluk that I can't post because it's exceptionally obvious. Suffice to say I was cock blocked so hard from just about every channel available, and it wasn't even something major RPT wise. Just trying to get some PC's together. I can only reference my own experiences in this regard but I have heard similar complaints. It was one of the things that made me realize something was truly wrong with ARM and the way things were running. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2014 11:44:18 GMT -5
Fair enough, YMMV seemingly, with so many things when it comes to this game. Too many, even.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2014 15:56:02 GMT -5
If the staff were serious about their social engineering attempting to consolidate the playerbase to stimulate more roleplay (in attempts to get the kind of roleplay that they want) they might consider closing Tuluk down. What I mean by this is they could make the City hostile and inaccessible to outsiders, similarly to Red Storm Village East. Have the government completely operated by staff.
In the days when Allanak was the only city the nobility there flourished and thrived. Allanak doesn't have an identity crisis where players have trouble understanding, people just know. Having one city would isolate that nature of the game rather than splitting it and trying to make it different. The nature of the power of Tuluk isn't well suited for players to wield. The role of Tuluk would be better suited for staff who have no other interests other than maintaining a realistic and stable/fun roleplaying environment.
This is more of a tongue in cheek response to them changing Tuluk, but I think the idea of only one city state has merit.
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Post by topkekm8s on May 10, 2014 16:09:46 GMT -5
this whole thing makes me ebinpotlyl
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