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Post by jcarter on Dec 18, 2014 13:08:24 GMT -5
nyrlicious great write up I can't speak for others but I've maintained the attitude (and written plenty about it) that there's this primary dichotomy of RPIs - either staff are the movers and shakers, or players are. As it is now, the staff-stated stance is they want players to be the movers and shakers. Ok, great, no one has a issue with this as a concept. In practice though, the Arm codebase does not support it. Players are extremely codedly limited - they can't rent a clan hall, form clans, hire NPC paymasters or guards, alter item or room descriptions, etc. Not to mention that there's no coded pressure to do anything. Maybe my memory is rusty but Atonement, for example, didn't have food vendors. Players had to go out and hunt dangerous game to get food for their clan. Now it's obviously extreme in that example and has the consequence of forcing players into clans but still, it created a coded necessity for players to act RPTs. Since players don't have that codebase, they're instead dependent on staff crafting up rewards for them. I'm not going to muddy my point by commenting on the quality of that, but I think it's safe to say that it's been found unsatisfactory. Your example is a cool one, don't get me wrong, and the shoe guy sounds like a great player but the truth is that the player was making the best out of what he had to work with. That's absolutely admirable, but also can be unrewarding which is part of the reason why players aren't interested in being the mover-and-shaker behind that. You want to see some kind of fruits for your labor. Yeah, good things will come to those who wait, but just speaking for me here, it's unfun and unrewarding to deal with the organizational highs and lows of things, type up form 88-b requests and status updates for months, and then pray that something happens. The bottom line is that I don't find that fun or worth the effort, and I have many other things I'd rather spend my time on than that. Since I'm not a masochist, I've just moved on and gone elsewhere. It's nice that they started realizing it and have taken steps, but for me it's not close to the point where I can look at Arm and say wow things have really changed and this will fit with my interests.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 13:43:36 GMT -5
"And if you did it without asking for any special coded little goodies what so ever, if you kept all five of you alive and did something productively, behaved as a clan without worrying about not having the coded advantages of one from day one, I
By "special coded goodies," do you mean mastercraft items that a player chooses to play a merchant for, in part, the ability to make?
There is a lot to be said for survival, but there is more of an incentive for clan members to survive when they actually have tangible things that bind them together and maybe even provide an incentive to join that clan in the first place, never mind a "base."
When a player attempts to get a warehouse for a clan and is ignored, or when a player submits a mastercraft item as the first piece of a clan uniform and it is butchered by the imm, then that player will probably feel discouraged and assume all other attempts at forming up a clan will be denied, so why even keep trying, and why even keep the character? When you are stonewalled on more than one occasion, it is easy to give up, but maybe that it is like, my weakness as a human or something.
Lots of characters tend to be Salarri guards. Think this would be the case if they didn't reap the benefits?
Lots of established clan members attract players. Why? I think for a place to stow their gear, train, and interact with other players, rather than because the documentation piques their imagination.
You seem to speak of player based clans as something that can easily happen without bells and whistles and a base. Being able to construct, earn, buy, or otherwise establish the things that make a clan, a clan, are what /truly/ enable clans to solidify. Establishing an incentive to stay alive is harder than it seems, though, and I am personally guilty of recently getting sick of waiting for staff replies when it comes to securing a base of operations, and wandering off into the desert and dying. And before, being able to establish a "base" was HUGELY contingent on whether or not the staff liked you, and despite the fact that there are now docs, the docs make it clear that staff have to trust (read: like) you for success behind certain points to occur
I would say that it probably actually means "nyr," not the staff as a collective, has to like you.
I watched as the Atrium was built from the ground up. That's the example Nyr likes to cite as his favorite player made clan, and unlike him, I saw what it took for it to actually occur: tons of imm support.
I love Pearl, Pearl's player, and what she was able to accomplish, and I think I have more insight into the origin of a clan that was recently reopened than, well, most people currently playing. But what she did is a lot different than what it takes to establish something like that in contemporary times, especially considering that interest on arm tends to gravitate toward adventure/combat/exploration. She did less people organizing on a ground level and more pandering to the IC powers that be, which is incredibly smart for what she was doing. To understand Pearl, her player recommended that I watch the movie 'Dangerous Beauty,' and I did and got it. But while those principles work okay for a sociliate type clan building, they don't translate well to something more exploratory/combat oriented for a lot of reasons, the main one being the need for a "base" better than an apartment and some hopefully mastercrafted goods that are available to provide additional incentive for not only joining but also remaining alive.
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Post by nyrlicious on Dec 18, 2014 14:38:06 GMT -5
Thanks, jcarter. I'd just like to say I am in huge support of what you've created here. With all the Edward Snowdens and Julian Assanges, et al, in the world today, the theme of the 2010s (and a very clear sign of the progression of humanity in this modern world) really has to be Who Watches the Watchers? For the first time in human existence people are being held accountable for their actions. Really, truly held accountable. The attitude in the early days of Arm was:
Dear Player,
This is not a democracy. If you don't like it, fuck off.
Regards,
The Shade of Nessalin
I have actually read emails where he's written almost exactly that. Verbatim. And what this game so desperately needed when Shitbhag and Co. were deep in their reign of blatant cheating, supported by a flock of GDB sycophants, was this website, a testament of their actions so that they had no choice but to either openly admit to their corruption... or change. You think even Obama hasn't changed his tone since the military files Private Manning released? You think after Edward Snowden exposed the government's dirty secrets, even though the government still maintains they want to arrest this man, you think they haven't changed their rhetoric? They have no choice, and as dramatic a comparison as it may be, neither do the staff of this MUD. Nyr can feign indifference to this website until he's blue in the face, even he has changed his approach to a slight degree since this board got started and as it rises in popularity. And the longer players are willing to expose their bullshit, the more they have no choice but to be held accountable for their actions and to adapt, even if it's in the form of baby steps. Privacy for the individual, transparency for the powerful. That's what this game needs. And it's exactly what Sanvean needed back when she was in power. Something to put her in her place. You think Nessalin was the bad cop and Sanvean the good cop, just because he's terse and rude, and she's closer to something called polite? I watch her (now seriously dated) Youtube videos where she talks about handling corruption in the game and cringe. That woman defines the very notion of double standards!
So good on you for maintaining this board. It's fielded largely by players who (claim to) no longer play the game, but it should continue to exist as a benefit to the players who do.
As for your reply. What if, for the sake of argument, Arm had no imms running it and yet you still had such a deep love for the game you insisted on playing? How would you play the game knowing you'll never get that fancy, custom made cloak you ordered, and that you have to make do with what exists in the present data base of items? Or if you knew that NPC boss of yours won't really react the way you want him to since no one is there to animate him? If you handed out the sort of power you're talking about to everyone, the game would experience a backwards evolution. The reason most of us love it so much is its dedication to quality. Randomly place me in just about any room in the game, however remote, and I'll probably be in awe of the room description. If every joe shmoe can now create and load their own items or their own NPCs you'd go back to the days where you can encounter things like this in game:
Standing before you is one mean human raider. You had better not mess with him.
A human raider is in an excellent condition.
Whether you think the word laconic is fitting in an sdesc or not, the game needs administrators approving some things in order for it to maintain its standards. Sometimes those standards are too rigorously enforced, but that part you may hate about the game is ironically part of the reason you also love it. Because obsessive enforcement of the setting is what makes Arm stand out from other RPIs, most of which have a theme of good elves and unicorns vs evil orcs and goblins.
The shoe-collecting elf I mentioned was a small fry in the grand scheme of things, but he had the right sentiment in mind. The same sentiment that allowed Thrain to rise to power. Part of Arm 2.0's original plan was meant to be power to the players, in the very real sense of the expression. The staff recognized we were tired of being told "You are but a mere cog in the wheel" in clans. That was the reason so many of us refused to even play in clans in the first place. Arm 2.0 was meant to be small time. It was for small groups competing against other small groups. So I reiterate, if Arm had no imms, how would you play? You're not going to topple Kurac or House Borsail, so you might as well get that idea out of your head right away and move on with it. If enough players commit to something, the game (staff included) have no choice but to follow. If you're tired of the big clans running the show, go to Red Storm. Start your own group. So what if you don't have the coded goodies clans get? Are they really anything that fancy beyond a code that says what rank you are and access to free food/water?
Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but I really have to believe that players can create their own power. Make Red Storm popular. Or, hell, go to Cenyr even! You're not allowed to make a character who begins there, but you're completely allowed to go there. And nothing's stopping you from inviting others. So go there and popularize it yourself, without the need for coded goodies from the staff. Is it really that Salarr is so popular and that's why you can't get players to follow you, or because you're too dead set in your ways and focused on your own, individual goals and incapable of cooperating as a group? Set up something that gets other players noticing you. If you've played the game long enough, you know how to make your own money. Players bitch about how water isn't the precious resource it should be, or that it's too easy to make money in game. Use that to your advantage. Use the extra money you know how to make to sell Kurac's goods or Salarr's goods at huge discounts. Have players riding down to Red Storm to meet your new hunting group and watch when the clanned players get pissed off about it. Popularize the small side of Arm, the little people, the struggles of the common man, and you can turn it from pointless monopoly merchants pretending to compete against one another to small organizations truly at odds and trying to outdo their neighbor. It may sound like I'm just breathing a lot of hot air, but will you really be satisfied if you get the coded benefits you're asking for? People always want something more. What happens when you have to make do with what exists?
Players think they really don't have the power to do these things and it's all the imms' fault, but they actually do. Be the small guy so the imms don't care to pay attention to you, and you actually stand a chance of becoming more powerful in the end. I'll say it again, if as few as five of you teamed up in Red Storm and did something off the grid, something removed from the other clans, but maintained a present group, how long would it be before others follow? I've seen it time and time again on the GDB, players saying how they'll go to Red Storm after their current character dies (and then they don't). Go there now. And have no demands of the game other than what the system already provides. Play the game like there are no imms and try to change things with popularity as your only real weapon. Man, can you imagine if suddenly 10, 11.. 12 people were playing in Red Storm? That's such a small amount of people, but you'd suddenly become so influential. I hate to keep harping on the same location in the game, but it's seen as a place for the players, for indies. And yet only a very select few ever use it for that purpose, and then they bitch about the game and its many flaws.
What I'm saying is, you can disempower the imms by simply not needing them.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 14:52:17 GMT -5
When the Byn got built up as a result of player interest last Winter, they created an uncharacteristically dangerous RPT that was obviously designed to thin the clan out.
I know that's a lot different than what you're talking about, and I'm not trying to diminish the rest of your post by addressing just this point, but what happened with that RPT was a clean cut example of what happens when player interest makes something that they don't want too popular, too popular.
Yes, there were ways that some of the deaths in that RPT could have been avoided, but regardless, it was clearly designed the thin the ranks of the Byn, which had grown enormous due to player interest and GREAT PC leadership, EVEN though some of those leaders were not coded leaders, per staff's resistance to allow "coded" leaders in an attempt to keep the population of the clan in check.
Because the Nyr-designed sponsored roles weren't getting enough minions, probably.
WITH ONLY ONE SERGEANT. They were ALREADY trying to curtail the size of the clan by limiting in game leadership, but when that failed, they simply designed an incredibly deadly RPT to kill off like a third of the clan.
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Post by jcarter on Dec 18, 2014 14:58:44 GMT -5
Yeah I mean there is a trade-off and either extreme end is going to end in disaster. I completely recognize you need imm supervision in any conceivable model for a basic quality control, but there are ways to take hands-off approaches. Going back to Atonement, they had a really nice crafting system. Again I may be misremembering this, but essentially you just used 'block of x metal' to craft whatever you wanted. But that variable x was the quality or type of metal, and the outputted item would have stats and appearance based on it. Use shitty quality aluminimum and you get a shitty-quality aluminum sword. There was also characteristics and customization flags implemented from lists. If you wanted to craft a sweater and had your bolt of good quality linen, you could also designate whether it was a v-neck or hooded, the color, type of stitching, and so on. The end product would be a code-generated description of it.
It's a simple idea but it cascades through and adds a depth as well as purpose to the game. Now if Lord Whoever wants a sword, Salarr needs to go find some good materials. If Lord Piggybanks wants a better sword to put him to shame, well Salarr needs to organize a RPT to get to the finest quality ore. It's about actually putting sand into the box to play with.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 14:59:22 GMT -5
You will see the same kinda of things happen if a player clan arises in any form, unless it follows the guidelines outlined by Nyr, which while initially exciting to me, really just seems like a way to micromanage any player created clans, while simultaneously orienting player created clans toward strictly mercantile settings.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 15:12:55 GMT -5
"also love it. Because obsessive enforcement of the setting is what makes Arm stand out from other RPIs, most of which have a theme of good elves and unicorns vs evil orcs"
Obsessive enforcement is fine, but unfair enforcement, unequally distributed enforcement, biased enforcement, and enforcement betraying attitudes of disdain, superiority, and judgment are /not/.
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Post by nyrlicious on Dec 18, 2014 15:41:28 GMT -5
I agree with both of guys. And I hope the staff reading this take what you've said into consideration and that your words echo in their head the next time they choose to reject something.
Though knowing the stubbornness of humanity, I sometimes wonder if all the reasonableness on this board here will only encourage them to do the opposite out of spite.
Let's hope not, but I do think recent events have done some damage to the game. The question is if the current staff will have enough common sense to even try to reverse it. Will you stand up to the challenge, imms?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 15:48:39 GMT -5
Ever since the Rise of Nyr, almost all of my play has directed at roles that won't force me to interact unnecessarily with the staff.
This has been universal since this shit started. I have made zero characters requiring reports, I have NOT SENT IN A SINGLE REPORT for ANYTHING since that mess, because if you, as a staff member, want to know what I am doing... Then you should care enough to ask me. Not taking time out of my day to pleasure Nyr or assuage his worries by sending in reports dictating how good I have been, or something. Fuck that.
I feel like my experiences over the last seven years have led me to choose roles that minimize contact with the staff - and I would go so far as to say that I have played roles that almost entirely eliminate their ability to criticize any interpretations of magick or whatever, mainly merchants, and then Nyr starts throwing around words like "spam crafting" on the GDB while quietly introducing an "anti spam crafting automatic- background-black-marking" code... Hahaha, I mean, there is just no winning.
The thing is, the way Nyr sees it, is that if you become a clan leader, you automatically become a "sponsored role," which means they can store you at any time.
Sure, start your own clan. Even without their help. But by definition, if you lead a "clan" then you are a "sponsored role" and Nyr can store you if he wants.
Translation:
If you become powerful enough, Nyr can store you at his discretion.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 15:55:06 GMT -5
I don't think anything that has recently happened on this board and/or the GDB will change much, if anything, except the opinions of some players, and the fact that I get to kick it with delerak on the reg again. Oh, and me losing all my karma, probably. Heh.
I would hope it might prevent them from allowing unseen biases to result in players being unfairly punished in the future because that shit is lame and not good for the game as a whole.
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Post by gloryhound on Dec 18, 2014 18:01:59 GMT -5
My reaction to this sort of thing is, if someone can't get a simple door put in over the course of months and after jumping through assigned hoops, something that would take about five seconds for a staff member to do, what hope is there of ever getting anything more? Why sink such an enormously disproportionate amount of effort into something with only a faint hope of a return?
More deeply, it sounds to me like your advice is "give up on concrete achievements and live for social interactions, arbitrary busy-work goals like stealing boots, and murder/betrayal/corruption". That's fine, a lot of people can live on a diet of that, but some (like me) have a strong streak of achiever in them and Arm just doesn't offer much to achieve after trying out the various guilds and exploring the emptiness. I'm not going to spend a year of my life to get one room description changed, that's all there is to it.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 18:08:35 GMT -5
I wouldn't advise players to do as I do or play as I have been playing. I think ones that aren't shown bias and newer players should try to pursue that sort of stuff, because maybe they won't be pre-judged the same way.
But it's like, I know I'm not the only one with this issue, if my PMs are to be believed. It seems that karma is more of a "like" than a "trust" thing, and this new system is orienting it even more toward subjectivity while claiming it is more objective. Seriously doubt it, it is really just a way to reverse engineer karma and make what few old players there are with high karma no longer able to say they have "earned" their karma. "You have to take old players with high karma with a grain of salt," said Nyr.
I just really can't believe he actually writes that shit sometimes, and is the main meddler and mouthpiece of Armageddon right now... What a douche.
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Jeshin
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Post by Jeshin on Dec 18, 2014 18:13:07 GMT -5
I'll be honest, I'm with Kronibas on this one. I encourage people to ride the gravy train of hope for as long as they can (if they are new). If they are players who have been abused in the past and are coming back because this time it's different, I tell them to quit ARM and do something FUN with their time.
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Post by victima de una mentirosa on Dec 18, 2014 18:23:06 GMT -5
If they are players who have been abused in the past and are coming back because this time it's different, I tell them to quit ARM and do something FUN with their time. And I am glad to have followed your advice. I love writing and I love roleplaying, but there are plenty of ways to do that without dealing with the petty, moronic clique of staff and staff pets who currently reign over Arma and are happily running what was once a great game into the ground. On the topic of gender in Arma, I don't even know where to start. Arma is full of retarded masculinists, feminists, trans people, and fuck all else that makes for a shit show of abuse and double standards this way and that. I can't cut a knife through that shit show and come up with any definitive conclusions to express here. |
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delerak
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"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
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Post by delerak on Dec 18, 2014 20:06:28 GMT -5
nyrlicious makes a few good points about being the change or whatever but the problem is most people don't want to go to Cenyr and solo-RP for days. People play to play with others. There is infrastructure already in place. There are tons of clans in 'Nak with a lot of history. I think some people just want some sort of change. Even Tektolnes getting pissed off at some noble house and just smiting it into nonexistence would be fun at a certain point. Does anyone here truly believe that any single noble house in 'Nak could exist for that long without being destroyed politically, or removed by 'Tek for some sort of injustice? This is just an example/discussion starter probably best for another thread but I'm just saying it bothers me that some of the clans have been around for so fucking long without taking hits because of the dumb shit that is pulled by a lot of the players (or npcs) of those clans.
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