Player-Staff Collaboration?

Also, and yes this is completely off-topic and should probably be a PM: Delerak, I read your sig's quote earlier today; I'm trying to help my foster-son through some very difficult life-lessons right now, and I just needed to absorb the wisdom of Winston. And... I might have choked up a little, and forwarded him the quote. So, thank you very much.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled disassociative discourse.

Considering that's what's happened to me at this point, I think you've got a valid concern. Staff have repeatedly dropped the ball on being polite, or personable, or even fair and objectively following their own precedents. The only thing that kept me wanting to return to the game after Nyr kicked me out for being a living reminder of his clique's incompetence -- the only thing was the enjoyment I got from playing with my friends on the MUD.

Even now, that's been taken away from me. My character, who I put effort into, has been taken away from me. Why? Because Nergal has never handled criticism or any sort of administrative stress in his life, as evidenced by his immature reaction which had to be walked back by someone with more pull than him -- Adhira. It has been only insult upon insult to me, and still the sycophants on the GDB continue to accuse me of having a martyr complex. Maybe I do have some sort of complex, because I'm still willing to be part of this toxic community which has openly rejected me and written me off as nothing but a nuisance.

Here's my stance: I'll stop giving shit when I get a proper apology for being fucked over a year ago. Contrary to the goldfish on the GDB, I have an attention span longer than a few seconds. In return, since I am actually a decent human being, I will also apologize and cease the flaming as I'll basically have nothing to flame about.

As someone mentioned to me before,
1. Barka leaks wiki.
2.
3. I get banned.

Oh, that wasn't my point. I was complaining that these diplomats keep missing the fact we're not in any way preventing a dialogue. (I believe Prime Minister Sinister was the first to point out they have an open invitation to join us.) If staffers came here and whipped my ass, jcarter wouldn't edit their posts and scramble their passwords to hide the fact they were banned. He'd probably win the lottery, get struck by lightning, and arrive in Hell for a snowball fight, but he wouldn't bail my ass out.

Reverse that scenario: I'd be dogpiled, banned for flaming, and then repeatedly flamed in absence by a forum that goes through a staggering amount of hand lotion.

In other words, that "dialogue" problem only exists on one side of the equation and I'm tired of being told it's mutual by people who think that makes them sound enlightened. It's like telling vikings they need to have an open conversation with the village they're pillaging to lessen hostilities, then turning around and telling the villagers they need to do the same thing. The problem's not mutual. For fuck's sake, they are well aware a lot of the most vitriolic people here started as their members who made the mistake of starting a dialogue over there.

... so no, attempts at dialogue would not necessarily be a bad thing... but I don't see them as likely.

It'd be politically difficult, if not impossible, for active staff to openly have a discussion with us because it'd probably be seen as crediting stuff over here that even some of the regulars rejected as crazy. Pretty much anything resembling a dialogue between our forums would have to start as concurrent threads that just kind of mirrored each other. They've built up the notoriety of this forum too much to back down from it in one go.

Quite the opposite; I've liked most of the staff members I've interacted with. It's doesn't seem that way because I tend to complain about long-running problems, stuff staffers do that are actually policy from above, and a couple notorious upper-tier people. There is also a huge turnover for the better staffers while there's longevity for the shitheads...

Ah, I really should learn C#. I've heard it's not all that different from C++.

Honestly, if the arm staff came over here it seems to me that they be spending so much time on the "debate stage" here that almost nothing would ever actually get done/changed in the game. The staff of arm have chosen to take a stance similar to other games in that ARM is not a collaborative game. I know some people want to change that, but the fact is it is a controlled staff/produce run game just like many other online games. They will listen (in what ever forum) to what players are saying to get a pulse on the player base, but in the end they are determining the direction of the game. So there is minimal reason with their current stance to spend anytime "debating" their stances as long as they have a player base that likes the product they are producing.



On a personal note...

I happen to not like the product at present because the game dose not support World Building. Some of reasons ARM dose not support world building is producer policy driven, some of it is the inability to have coded functions to make these things possible. Frankly I am unsure of the "vision" the producers have for the game. Other than the attempt at ARM 2.0 I haven't seen much vision communicated over the years. They seem to be very tactical in nature in terms of code/game functions as well as spending a lot of their time on plots and day to day admin.

To give some credit, they did recently introduce a path way for a player/character to form a new merchant house. So that is a step in the right direction if they truly want to have a game/product that gives players some world building opportunities.

At the end of the day I rather staff actually spend time on changing policy and coding the tools needed to empower players to change the world they play in vs. spending their time debating on the stage.

Pick one staffer. Call them a community lead. Call them a Communications Staffer. Call them whatever you like. Make it this persons job to listen to staff AND players and basically summarize ideas to pitch at whatever passes for an Armageddon staff meeting or e-mail to the decision makers.

EDIT - Then send that singular staffer to come do their assigned function and also do it on the GDB and also do it on the IDB

I don't believe that blurb has been part of the official advertisements or documentation for a long time.

Jesantu has made the blurb his calling card:

I miss the collaboration and open-world feel that the old game used to have, and which is exemplified in that blurb. Instead, today's Arm is exemplified by Kmart's post:



Clearly he still has fun in the current environment, but I can't.