Why I won't be returning to Armageddon Mud

are you talking about Ruke and the boring breed brigade? he doesn't give a shit, and it's funny.

not even solely Ruke. like, I get that you're all bitter with staff, feel your creative juices are oppressed, and want to fight fire with fire, and that's fine.

but when it comes to discussing the roleplay of other players and bashing on them, I feel like I'm watching a bunch of overweight, jaded thirty year olds dry-heave over a keyboard. they're the ones I meant you could give encouragement to.

Sure, but people in this thread are letting off steam. If Ruke's player (or any player) came over and opened a thread titled "What makes an interesting player and how can I achieve this" I'd be willing to bet there'd be better feedback.

You don't seem to grasp the very simple point that I and others were trying to make. I'll try and make it as concise and easily grasped as possible:

Sanvean, Halaster and other past staffers were confident enough in their creative and roleplaying ability (since they were players first and foremost) to more easily reward karma on merit.

Nyr and Nessalin are less confident. In fact, for many years they haven't even been players. They get their joy from controlling things. Because of that, gradually, over the years, the culture of awarding karma slanted more and more away from someone's ability to create or lead, and more towards their longevity and obedience.

Also. Judging by your post, you're taking it a little personally. No one's trashing Ruke in this thread. Far from it.

A serious percentage of people who sit idlying in the tavern are people with busy real lives. They log in at work and play at maybe 1/3 capacity that they're capable of, while doing other shit IRL. Then if some fun found its way towards them on their own, they set aside whatever they were working on, or scare their kids under the bed, and go have fun a little. I'm scared to even find out how much of our playerbase are like that, but it's a good chunk. At the same time, I cant blame them too horribly, since ... RL trumps all. Though if despite all their busyness, they find plenty of time to twink their skillz, then I can blame them plenty.

It happens sometimes. It was extremely prevalent in Tuluk. 4-7 people are sitting in a tavern in total silence. 1 of them is hopefully actively mindspeaking and doing secret shit, 1 more is like Q from startrek. He've been the road, the scarecrow, the smoking man on the chair, he've done it all, and now simply cant be fucked. Others are semi idle, or just boring. Then some PC walks in and it's like the whole room turns to color. Full of jokes, or conversation topics, or stories, or controversy, or bar fights, or ... anything really to add, even if mundane, content into everyone else. Most of the time those PCs are either throw away charas, or just awesome players who value RP and who are not bugged by their RL children right now.

Anyway. So few points.

One main cause for drop of roleplaying is the fact that the playerbase grew up. We simply do not have the time we used to to sink into the game. Sometimes, even if people login for 1-3 hours a day, half of those hours are half-afk, and even that is more then they thought they're capable of. Not because the game sucks, but because they're grown up adults with responsibilities and shit. It is not the Staffers fault that people are like. It is though the staffers fault that they do not see this and sometimes come up with whacky shit to make the players hide their children/boss into a closet, because awesome shit is going on in the game and they gotta focus.

Where is this notion that interesting people with great roleplaying skills are discouraged by staff? Only because some staffers say "emoting" is not roleplaying? Fuck yeah. I agree with that. I've seen a Noble who was a great emoter, for whom it was perfeclty IC to kill off her own entire PC membership. Like she literally set her mind to kill them and did it. She didnt hide the fact from Imms, she reported often, she discussed 'ways' on how it will be done and so on. But in the end, she took a bustling clan and killed it. It was perfectly IC and Staff allowed it to happen, because ... well, that's Nobles for you. Let's hope the underlings will figure shit out and solve it their own way. They didnt. Granted that once the Noble finished her fun, found herself incapable of generating her own fun, she stored. But ... well. That's how it is.

But aside that story. Why do you think that staff 'discourages' long emotes? Some players do, for sure. You can find plenty of people complaining about it here, making fun of long winded emotes that describe everything in the game, from the color of their eyes, to the state of their boots. What does staff has to do with it? Or are you saying that staff does not 'encourage' well developed characters by granting them Karma and supporting them just due to their sheer well developness. I find that sometimes they do, but yes ... not beyond a certain level of Karma. Because being well developed, does not at all mean that they are interactive, or that they involve other people in their own plots, or that they are trustworthy.

There is a player who is most definitely 'not' a favorite of the staffers. He had his entire Karma wiped, had certain guilds removed from his chargen, he is a 100% guaranteed skill twink. But every time he deigns to bless the game with a leadership role, the game just improves by a factor of 10. That clan suddenly starts to thrive, interesting shit start popping up by the dozens. One RPT after another to a point where his underlings are exhausted. Personally, I hope he is being given karma for this. I dont know how 'well developed' his charas are. Though I imagine they are.

In the end, high karma 'should' mean ability to use a powerful guild for the benefit of the game's content. A Krathi can eradicate an entire clan in 15 minutes, after twinking for a rl week. A sorcerer ... I dunno, sorcs are fucked. But you get my point. the higher the karma requirement is, the easier it is for a player to go full asshole and just destroy people's fun, or have fun on their own at the price of destruction of other's fun. And fact is, once they got the role, the staffers cant force-store them just for being an unproductive player. They cant force-store him for killing half the game population, 'if' the killings are all IC and well documented. They could kill him if for example that chara is clanned and his actions are ICly known and discouraged by the clan. But they cant actually force store for being an a very well emoted out, inner development galore, total asshole. Point is, it is necessary to demonstrate a lot of things 'beyond' long-winded emotes, to gain higher karma. Don't you think that's appropriate?

Also. The game is boring. Dip in a playerbase, boring people who do play. The game is boring. So your idea of fixing it is to say why you're 'not' returning to the game? Ever considered to like ... returning and making the game less boring? I dont get this.

it hasn't changed. it might change with nyr gone and a sea change among staff, but: not optimistic with some of the shits still in admin+ position out there. the best way to get karma and rewarded by staff: do nothing. if you do something, you will be accused of all sorts of shit, and they will, and have, and still do punish you with an OOC vindictive drive towards the boring and the obedient.  survival of the weakest.

it is known