Gems From The GDB

At the risk of being honest:

"At the risk of sounding mean spirited, I actually think most players of nobles just don't have enough creativity. There are so many things you can do as a clan leader besides fail or fall, or throw a party or behead someone. So many! There are a lot of intricate political deals that could be hammered out over a lengthy period of time, things that would leave a long lasting impact on the clan even after they are gone. I just don't think most players realize this so instead they get bored (or become boring) and declare that "there's nothing to do with a sponsored role".


Yeah. Most of the players of nobles in the last decade have lacked your creativity. There couldnt possibly be other blockers to noble lead plot.

That’s something I don’t blame players for. Arm just doesn’t do the long game very well. Long term plans, just don’t pan out. You could be working with a cooperative staffer, then end up with a staffer that doesn’t care for your plot due to a staff change. Then you’re back to square one no matter how far you’ve progressed.

You want people to stick around you need long term things for people to stick around for.

If you believe in "staff are players too", then players share the blame for all of Arm's shittiness. If you don't, I'd say it's about 50/50.

There have been a handful of reviews about Arm where a new player tried to play casually and ended up getting fired from their clan or otherwise ostracized from the general PC population. In the end, all they've decided to do is throw the problem onto the pile of reasons the game is dying. There's no attempt to make the game more casual-friendly, and as a result, it's mostly obsessive people that sink their time into the game, which leads to weird behavior between players and a generally unwelcoming community. There are, in fact, players who actively oppose an increased playerbase because they fear a dilution in roleplaying quality. As if that hasn't happened already.

But that's not a unique problem for Armageddon. It extends to all of the RPIs, really. The problem lies with how difficult it is to schedule a playing time with other people, and interact with PCs while they are logged out. RPIs have resisted adding any form of messenger system where PCs could send in-character messages to one another in a way that didn't rely on whether the PC was logged in or not. MUSHes and MUD/MUSH hybrids, like Arx, handle this problem way better. You'll never see that in Armageddon because of mass illiteracy written into the setting, and how quickly such a system would level the playing field between casual and hardcore players.

Put simply, hardcore players have no interest in making the game more casual-friendly because it takes away any advantage they might have previously earned from their time investment. When you're logged in more often, you don't just skill up faster. You build more connections with PCs, you participate in politics better, and you're able to be more flexible and cover more ground in an antagonistic role. You're able to roleplay more, which leads to IC promotions as well as OOC promotions in the form of karma and sponsored role considerations. Of course staff are going to pick someone who plays 6 hours a day to play a noble or templar, over someone who plays 3 hours a week.

^ Such a game has no reason to try and cater to such players, either.

guy who plays 3 hours a week vs guy who plays 10 hours a day, posts on forum, votes, makes original content, etc.

The issue of time investment and 'casual vs. hardcore' is definitely not an issue limited to RPIs or MUDs, either. Most MMOs deal with the same complaints, along with some action-oriented and survival games like Rust, Ark, etc. Any and every game has a few personalities who will play 24/7 for that extra edge and why stop them?

thread about casuals split off to general discussion.

The fact that Staff humored the question and basically said yes is oh so gross and here we are again in the era of favoritism based on who you are cybersexing on Staff.