forarm
Clueless newb
Posts: 100
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Post by forarm on Nov 9, 2015 21:49:27 GMT -5
A friend who still plays recently contacted me and told me that Nyr had left the game and many people were returning. They asked me if I would return and I told them I'd think about it. I checked out the forums and then talked to them about the current status of the game, and then went to talk to another friend who recently stopped playing as well. At the end I decided not to waste my time with this game, and it comes down to one reason:
The game is boring.
Others have said this before, but its true the game is really boring. Once in a while you hear people complaining about the RP in the game being shitty. Most people dismiss this complaint as newbies playing elves who want to ride, but it isn't really quite that. It used to be that 1 out 20 people entered a bar, picked a corner to sit in, and more or less idled without interacting with anyone. This is more like 2 out 5 people now. Another two our of five people, don't idle, but have nothing to contribute or even anything to say, they mostly shrug when talked people talk to them. At best they just sit around and wait to see if anything interesting happens. The last person is either in a sponsored role or attempting to start a company but they don't have much support, not from staff, not from the player base full of dull people.
Everyone has mentioned Ruke as being part of the problem with Kurac, before him there was also another dwarf too who was utterly boring. These people aren't unique anymore. There were 183 left logging in the game, minus about twenty former/current staff members, and a number of other butt kissers who never see anything wrong with the game. The people left, are people who have more or less lost the will to do anything or even attempt to contribute. Qoriya, who used to do nothing but ruin other people's plots is not unique either anymore. There are more of these types of people around, people who contribute nothing but still work at keep the status quo, who attempting to shut down any fun they see as part of their fun.
Old twink has touched upon this in his posts but hearing my friend describe the state of the game, just brought home how much damage has been caused to the game over the last few years by staff. The fact that the most interesting thing to have happen in the world for months was a spider nest RPT. The fact that players joke that most plots involve someone trying to kill someone else over something petty. The problem isn't just the staff anymore, its the community, due to staff actions the community has slowly devolved into some of the most unimaginative players. All the people that used to create fun in the game have mostly been driven away, or told 'no' by staff way too often. And even if they come back, they will be surrounded by players who are now equally as boring, who have nothing of interesting to say, rp or contribute to the game because they have given up on attempting to achieve anything in the game or its because it is all they really know what to do at this point. The economy is shit, the clans are static, the politics are none existant, and the world doesn't change unless the staff want to create less work for themselves.
Throwing Nyr under a bus was a good move, and it has brought like 46+ people back in less then a week it seems (holy shit the guy was toxic), but the damage has been done already. The community is a shadow of its former self. The players returning are going to find a static world, that is filled with nothing but dull players, rukes, quoriyas and lizzies, who'll want to do nothing but wait for staff to throw them some spider nest RPTs, and be happy with just that. It really seems like anything the staff does at this point is no different then keeping a patient who's been given nothing but poison to eat for years and years on life support.
Thanks but no thanks. Even my last friend in Arm, who still plays is going to stop playing once fallout 4 comes out.
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jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,070
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Post by jkarr on Nov 9, 2015 22:02:22 GMT -5
i hear u bro and dont blame u at all. i think really now its up to some of the more creative players left that still have some spark to light the match while nyrs taking a break from pissing on the tinder. really it all starts from being able to have ur own fun in spite of boring players and then after a minute other players start getting curious or seeing that something is pushing ur char along (its really urself) and they start to stir and then.. there u go. staff get curious then and may start getting involved but generally the less u need them to do what ur doing the more that their involvement wont be the shitty restricting type
this is probly best time for those with ideas to start sandboxing from scratch and see where it goes while theres room to breathe
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2015 22:02:26 GMT -5
hahahahaha more make fun of ruke plz!!!! or who is that boring cuntwise gangee in allanak that ruins politics by being buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuring? players suck, i agree with nessalin.
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Post by sirra on Nov 9, 2015 22:16:38 GMT -5
Almost all MUDs and MUSHes, taken on their own, are boring. They become fun when you get engaged with interesting and creative people in game, and go on to have whacky adventures.
Armageddon has been uniquely efficient at driving off interesting and creative players. Most anyone who has ever played a leadership role, will be able to confirm how straitjacketed it is. How much shit you have to eat. Most people can offer anecdotes of when staff brutally crippled the someone's plot or way in which a group was entertaining themselves, for just some arbitrary and petty reason.
Someone posted in here about how them and a few friends made use of a tent, that was left over from some destroyed desert elf clan. They logged in one day to find it deleted. Probably because some imm had noticed them using it, and decided to be a killjoy. Armageddon staff under Nyr have never fully appreciated the fact that middle-management clan leaders and movers and shakers are the most important segment of the game. Instead, they just used their authority and influence to fuck over anyone they felt jealous, envious of or threatened by. They did not act like real storytellers, so much as imagining themselves petty deities.
At the same time. Their staffing culture is so retarded and toxic, as to encourage such apathy and burnout...That they have ruined the 'RP middle class' in more insidious ways as well. They've taken at least a dozen players who were quite fine in their leadership roles, and ruined them as staffers. Since the main criteria for making someone staff on Armageddon is your GDB posting behavior, they took plenty of decent people who were fine leaders and enthusiastic about the game (and not bad people), and pretty much ruined them as staff. They either became jaded and stopped playing (because they saw how the sausage was made) or just become a fucktard like Mordiggian or Eury.
So Armageddon has spent quite a few years now siphoning off both their most enthusiastic players and their most displeased...And that's created a shrinking band of sullen mediocrity left in the middle. There are very few inspiring leaders left in game anymore. You've mostly got decent sorts who aren't allowed to do anything, or just boring spear-carriers. Or guys like Ruke, who I personally admired, but who have clearly on some level, sunk into a certain apathy. It's hard to stay inspired after twenty years of being a Sergeant, and only being allowed to do the same things. And that's even with an all right staffer. I liked Nergal too. But you know? It took like two fucking RL months even for Nergal (who I like more than most staff) to facilitate a silt horror hunt.
In Kurac, we spent quite a few evenings, literally, doing nothing for hours. I kept at it long as I did, cause I liked the players. And I'd have kept playing if I didn't get abused by Nessalin into quitting. But do I feel any desire whatsoever to play again? No.
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jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,070
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Post by jkarr on Nov 9, 2015 22:22:44 GMT -5
Almost all MUDs and MUSHes, taken on their own, are boring. They become fun when you get engaged with interesting and creative people in game, and go on to have whacky adventures. Armageddon staff under Nyr have never fully appreciated the fact that middle-management clan leaders and movers and shakers are the most important segment of the game. Instead, they just used their authority and influence to fuck over anyone they felt jealous, envious of or threatened by. So Armageddon has spent quite a few years now siphoning off both their most enthusiastic players and their most displeased...And that's created a shrinking band of sullen mediocrity left in the middle. all of this |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2015 23:22:37 GMT -5
While jaded disillusionment has robbed many players of their inspiration, the shitty roleplaying standards of Armageddon are just as much down to the fact that staff simply doesn't acknowledge very many types of good roleplay. They only really seem to care about how well-behaved players are, and their propensity for enduring clan leadership. That's only one facet of roleplay, and needless to say, it's the one that least contributes to how lively and immersive the roleplaying environment is.
There's basically no money in being great at writing, emoting, portraying a believable character, being interesting to interact with, and drawing the game world into your roleplay in a realistic manner. That might get you the first or perhaps second karma. Beyond that, it's mostly about how well the staff likes you on a kind of master/servant basis. The playerbase has also developed a strange habit of equating the ability to develop powerful PCs with being a great player, and tends to interpret going out to kill animals as proactive, creative leadership.
This wasn't always the case. Sanvean, being an author, valued the actual quality of people's roleplay. She acknowledged those who could roleplay to a standard that would belong in real literature. She rewarded well-made characters. And just as staff decency went out the window with her departure, so did the emphasis on quality roleplay. It's now a game that has developed an element of actual anti-roleplay by discouraging long emotes, treating expressive roleplay as if it was some kind of undesirable showing-off, and constantly insisting that emoting isn't an important factor in roleplay.
Being a responsible, productive player is all well and good, that's also important. But it's still a fucking text-based roleplaying game. To dismiss the literary aspects of roleplay is like dismissing the acting part of a movie and declaring that the only thing that's important is the quality of the script. A good script with shitty actors results in a rubbish movie.
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jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,070
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Post by jkarr on Nov 9, 2015 23:38:24 GMT -5
While jaded disillusionment has robbed many players of their inspiration, the shitty roleplaying standards of Armageddon are just as much down to the fact that staff simply doesn't acknowledge very many types of good roleplay. They only really seem to care about how well-behaved players are, and their propensity for enduring clan leadership. There's basically no money in being great at writing, emoting, portraying a believable character, being interesting to interact with, and drawing the game world into your roleplay in a realistic manner. That might get you the first or perhaps second karma. Beyond that, it's mostly about how well the staff likes you on a kind of master/servant basis. It's now a game that has developed an element of actual anti-roleplay by discouraging long emotes, treating expressive roleplay as if it was some kind of undesirable showing-off, and constantly insisting that emoting isn't an important factor in roleplay. u guys are on point today |
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Post by sirra on Nov 10, 2015 0:03:57 GMT -5
Funnily enough, the game really did have a higher standard of roleplay in like 2002. This is partly because imms like Halaster or Sanvean, were very creative. They weren't perfect. Sanvean had a bit of a fetish for flowery, flouncy f-me's and would coddle them.
But they were basically replaced by staff who were fairly bad to mediocre RPers and worse storytellers, such as Nessalin or Nyr. Nyr is the archetypal example of a character that wouldn't be taken seriously in the least, if they weren't on staff and had various behind the scenes influence and knowledge that he wasn't afraid to act on. Nessalin, as I've heard, doesn't really play. He's pretty much that big retard kid with the mullet who likes to tap at the aquarium and stare at it with dull, glassy eyes while the pretty little fishes scatter about, before returning to his usual schedule of rigorous self-abuse and pretending he's a 'coder'.
Given their mediocrity, it probably didn't sit well with them to keep rewarding karma as Sanvean did it. Many of the best RPers after all, they probably didn't like. Instead, as oldtwink said, having a basic grasp of RPing became suitable for the first couple points of karma...But after that, what mostly mattered was longevity, obedience and your ability to never make a character that would threaten their's or friend's alt in game.
Staff are allowed to have multiple alts, and you can bet that most of it is dumb shit like sorcs, nihilists and renegade muls. They're never a Byn runner or such. And ironically, they almost never play in clans either.
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king
Clueless newb
Posts: 118 
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Post by king on Nov 10, 2015 1:45:04 GMT -5
instead of just trashing on their writing, why not try and nudge them in the right direction? such a needlessly dickish forum sometimes
i mean, damn, i've read the logs some of you guys have posted and even played with a few of you, and truthfully, most of you are pretty mediocre. some are par for the course, others fall short a few strokes. that's truth.
you're not all artists kept down by the boot of the man, man. some of you were just as dull.
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Post by lyse on Nov 10, 2015 2:15:22 GMT -5
instead of just trashing on their writing, why not try and nudge them in the right direction? such a needlessly dickish forum sometimes i mean, damn, i've read the logs some of you guys have posted and even played with a few of you, and truthfully, most of you are pretty mediocre. some are par for the course, others fall short a few strokes. that's truth. you're not all artists kept down by the boot of the man, man. some of you were just as dull. Eh, it's what you choose to read into. Sure some people get a little four-channy and are generally full of shit, but at the same time there are people that post here that make a lot of sense. What do you expect from a forum that is pretty much unmoderated? I've never poked fun at any player, neither have a lot of people. Not sure how Ruke got to be the whipping boy here, but it's whatever. My only suggestion to staff was and always will be: there needs to be more staff run plots, players will follow that lead and attempt to do more based off that. It's like priming a pump, pour a little down the well to get more out. It doesn't have to be the copper war or flying spiders, but just little things....little one off "stories". I've been saying that for months.....months. However you want to put it, "You, the staff should run more things. It gets awfully boring going to kill scrab, tembos and kryl and spam crafting little bone knives day in and day out; please rectify." Or "You gaiz suk, lol, ur game is boring!" It's fallen on deaf ears, regardless of how it's being said. Ultimately, that's why I won't be returning to Armageddon: players get ignored. Why waste my time on a game where I'm told ic'ly and ooc'ly, I don't matter? |
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jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,070
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Post by jkarr on Nov 10, 2015 2:34:57 GMT -5
instead of just trashing on their writing, why not try and nudge them in the right direction? such a need lesslyfully dickish forum sometimes ftfy |
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Post by BitterFlashback on Nov 10, 2015 4:00:28 GMT -5
instead of just trashing on their writing, why not try and nudge them in the right direction? such a needlessly dickish forum sometimes blah blah blah We've done that too. Use the search feature, you lazy ass. Giving advice is crucial to pointing out how terrible what they're actually doing is. |
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jesantu
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 388
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Post by jesantu on Nov 10, 2015 4:09:03 GMT -5
People who deserve to be given a friendly nudge in the right direction, get one. If you're a dick....surprise!....no one's going to help you out.
For all nyrsallin and urinemoose and others faults, I'd look past all of it....every single one....I'd even write in suggestions for RPTs and bring ideas for how to offer political turmoil to the world if not for one issue with them and one issue alone.
They're rude cuntsmacks.
I can deal with a lack of creativity or ideas. Players should feel welcome to brain storm their ideas with imms. But when you're a dick, I can see why no one wants to share their ideas with you anymore.
So, no. We should not be offering friendly encouragement to people who treat us like dirt. I'm shocked you would even suggest that. What they need is encouragement to treat people with common decency. And I think this board accomplishes that.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2015 8:28:42 GMT -5
urinemoose! go jesantu go jesantu you're the man you're the man. fistbump yawwwwwwwr
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king
Clueless newb
Posts: 118
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Post by king on Nov 10, 2015 8:49:44 GMT -5
I'm not talking about friendly encouragement for staff, I'm talking about the players people repeatedly bash.
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