Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2014 1:00:51 GMT -5
It's a bad idea to completely bar staff from playing PCs. SoI did that and the result was that staff had no fucking clue what playing the game was actually like, what it needed, and what did or didn't work. However, Armageddon's staff should be restricted to common races and roles, probably nothing above 3 karma. It's not their job to play powerful characters. This, I can get on board with and agree with. I don't see it happening because of the way karma is distributed, but this, I could at the least understand. In fact, if anything, it gives MORE insight into what basic races/classes can expect to see. |
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098 
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Post by punished ppurg on Oct 28, 2014 7:25:26 GMT -5
Okay, that I can get behind. Mundanes or low karma only PCs with the intention of burning twice as bright and dying just as fast. That's the way you can get a feel for the entry-level idea of the MUD. Right?
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,515
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Post by Jeshin on Oct 28, 2014 8:22:01 GMT -5
I was head storyteller on TSOSmud for years, wasn't an RPI but it was where I got my chops as a staffer. Staff don't need to be limited on what they can play and here is why. Once you become a staffer your perspective on the game inherently shifts because you peek behind the curtain read reports. The game world isn't that big and getting reports from 1 clan can give enough to peek into various backstage shows as it were. This leaves staffers with 2 realistic choices with a character.
1 you play something the game needs but players seem uninterested in (until players are interested then you transition)
2 you play a flavor PC meant to enhance the world and be an example of 'proper roleplay' that you want players to emulate
These are the realistic options for the ethical staff. Having 'personal' characters is ridiculous because you know to much you understand to much, it's just not going to work in the long run. You have to much power and knowledge and if you become attatched it becomes a problem. So pick 1 or 2, play it, enough it, and help your game with it.
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Post by jcarter on Oct 28, 2014 10:17:46 GMT -5
I'll give credit to Nyr that he's trying to bring some change but the execution is terrible. He comes up with these off the wall ideas (shadow artists? seriously?), can't seem to take any good amount of criticism about them, and then just ham-fistedly implements them into the game with the laziest storytelling. It's literally deus ex machina - god-king Muk Utep comes down and says 'this is how things are now'. They're fixes but in the wrong places - the Arm version of replacing your engine when you have a flat tire. You want more intrigue and backstabbing, cultivate a reason for people to actually want to backstab each other. There's no actual reason for people to do it now because there's infinite resources that can be converted to money easily without anything in particular to use it on beyond superfluous items like silk shirts. Why risk your neck when there's plenty to go around for everyone?
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Post by BitterFlashback on Oct 28, 2014 11:17:44 GMT -5
Nyrs entire career in Arm has been like that new middle manager who starts changing shit for the sake of change as soon as he gets the job. He has to do it, he thinks, because it's the only way to get credit for any successes that happen in spite of him. if he left things alone, what could he claim he accomplished? And he ruined things because of this desire for acclaim. But where this deviates from real-world middlemanagement is that when Nyr wrecked Tuluk, the staff gave him their flagship product to ruin. And then promoted him. This comes back to anaiah's point about not banning staff from playng: 80% or more of problems that come about are the result of people who DON'T play not knowing what the experience is like anymore, and making wildly uneducated decisions because they literally (not playing) don't know fuck all about the result of what they're doing (and how it fucks playability or player enjoyment). Nyr, Adhira, Ness, Morg-- they didn't play as Shadow Artists after nyr ruined Tuluk's licensed thief/assassin system. They werent dissuaded by the massive player blowback over the announcement of the already-made changes being swapped into the game. They also didnt play as minor nobles. Those are the other group of PCs impacted by the changes. And it would have been wise to see what the new experience is like as someone paying to be potentially victimized by it down the line. Every game company with a future uses play-testers to make sure stuff they put in 1) doesnt cause glitches and 2) doesnt ruin the game's intended experience. Sometimes they pay people to test. Sometimes they put out a cheap or free alpha release in exchange for the recipients submitting bug reports. And for tiny companies, like a group of unpaid volunteers ( *cough* Arm *cough*), they play the game themselves with the same lack of admin powers players have to play under. what happened when people bailed on Tuluk? Anyone remember? It was blamed on Christmas, which was celebrated for the first time in 2013. How did the staff react to Nyr running nearly everyon out of Tuluk? Did they make him roll bak the changes? Punish him? No, he made new templar uniforms, closed half the rooms, collapsed a noble house, and moved on to Allanak to repeat the process. And later made him a Producer as the one year anniversary of the Shartist mishap approached. This shit keeps happening because the mid and upper staff arent playing through the shit they inflict on the playerbase. By which i mean as players if at all. |
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Post by sirra on Nov 7, 2014 21:15:55 GMT -5
Sanvean was worse than Nessie to a degree words couldn't do justice. He is a belligerent asshole, a bully and the very definition of small man syndrome, but this is projected to everyone around him, including members of the staff. A son of a bitch, but an equal opportunity son of a bitch. Sanvean may have had a better forum face, but would play favorites by the half dozen and rules would be conjured up, changed and dismissed based on mood, lunar alignment and if tampons happened to be available at the corner store or not. Sanvean was responsible for more indiscriminate skill locks, skill boosts, character stores, characters slain via staff power, plot manipulation and staff / player / forum politicking than any other person in the games history. The difference is, Sanvean could be fun. Nyr has always seemed more interested in fucking people over than anything else. He is the definition of the worst kind of junior high DM, who takes player success as a personal affront. I'll take Sanvean's benevolent sociopathy, whose true nature was virtually exclusive to staff and the starfuckers among you, but which still let the rest of us enjoy the damn game, over Nyr's malevolent attention to detail. Sanvean never stifled all RP and made everyone quit in a clan I was playing in, for one. I could give less than a shit if he/she was stalking someone in RL. First post on this board. But I've played Arm off and on since 2001, and have seen a lot of fucked up things. |
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