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Post by shadowmember on Nov 28, 2016 6:59:00 GMT -5
Staff have finally announced the closure of the hunter divisions within the merchant houses. I thought now would be a good time to find out about the Expansion Division. I never got involved with the Expansion Division (in any of it's incarnations). What was it? What did it actually do that was different to the usual hunters in Salarr? What staff support did they actually get/plots did they manage to do without staff? Did Kadius ever have anything similar? Nenyuk?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2016 12:16:23 GMT -5
The expansion division was an experimental mobile unit who's intent was to travel around the known world and sell arms to tribals and anyone else they could find. They opperated out sof a wagon. It sounds fairly innocent but they were nothing but. They were supposed to stir up wars and armed conflicts where they went with the purpose of selling large amounts of Salarr goods. The Salarri staff member who created the expansion division eventually went AWOL. Salarr already had a broad license to do whatever they wanted, they even had a Salarri family member who was a mindbender which is usually unheard of having a mindbender in a clan leadership position (granted this was the end of the world time and a lot more crazy stuff was going on). Without staff oversight to keep the clan from going out of control, staff eventually got a lot of complaints from players and other staff members and senior staff (Adhira) told the Salarr staff that followed to shut it down. The expansion division was declared a "success" and was to be implemented in the entire houses opperations division and became a virtual part of Salarr which players no longer participated in.
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Post by desertman on Nov 28, 2016 12:29:44 GMT -5
That is a prime example of staff not understanding how things work on a player level. So the expansion division's purpose was to roam around and starts conflicts that would then sell massive amounts of Salarri weapons and armor to groups so they could participate in wars.
Translation: Go around and start mostly virtual conflicts so we can sell virtual goods to virtual people for what will be mostly virtual money.
You could do that entire job/plotline with the request tool and a sentence on the history page.
That is the difference between players actually making things happen and doing things, which is fun, and players just being a pawn for staff-ran initiatives, which is fucking old.
More and more I feel like staff is somewhat out of touch with what makes the game fun for players, as opposed to what makes the game fun for them. It seems like a lot of them are in it for, "What I personally enjoy.", instead of, "I want to make the game fun for players and understand what is fun for players.".
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2016 12:52:21 GMT -5
I remember hearing something back in 2000, and that is the game exists for the staff's enjoyment. Whoever said it was pretty spot on and only the staff members seems to have changed. I'm not sure if it's a systematic problem of how the game is designed, or if staff choices (and those on staff making the choices) have contributed to this.
I think Staff members like Savak, Tlaloc, and even Halaster, Bhagarav, Zagren, and Dyrins understood what players enjoy. Even though some of them were controversial staff members (some having complaints about them) they were willing to make tough calls and compromises in order to actively and directly engage players with fun and unpredictable roleplay opportunities, in ways that only staff members can.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2016 1:50:45 GMT -5
The expansion division was also during a time when Armageddon 2 had been announced... so, everyone - imms included - were doing all this apocalyptic, heavily magicked, weird shit... because we thought the game was on a countdown to ending and had to get as much out of the game as we could, all while preparing for an IC, in game apocalypse.
Aside from the aforementioned Salarri family member, lots of characters were granted special stuff: extra descriptions, magical abilities, psionic abilities, magickal items... I could go on.
It was pretty hard not to get sucked into all of that, too. Magickal items, magick rangz, and magickal shit in general was incredibly common during that period.
It was a weird time in the game and the expansion division seemed immersed in some the more otherwordly goings-on. I was playing a kadian merchant at the time, myself, and remember probably being way more involved with magick shit than that character probably should have been - despite the fact that such involvement paled in comparison to what was going on in the rest of the game.
Then the end of the world never happened, so... yeah. It was a weird but often neat time to play ArmageddonMUD, and, despite the flaws, I enjoyed playing through that time a good bit. Having a staff member like Shalooonsh helped make it that way. Then Nyr became my clan's imm, and, within a month, the clan was dead.
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Post by sirra on Dec 15, 2016 21:06:07 GMT -5
The lesson of Expansion Division is that staff will rarely miss an opportunity to stop players from having too much fun.
Even when things got scaled back, and made more modest, staff pretty much went out of their way to hamstring any potential attempt to have an effect on the world, like making it impossible to get an outpost built. (I spent 6 fucking RL months gathering materials for that thing!)
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Post by desertman on Dec 16, 2016 9:21:35 GMT -5
I want to say that as it stands you can now get an outpost/camp put in if you put in the work using the same guidelines they use for the MMH building system. Did I dream that? Someone can go look it up I suppose. I swear I saw that you can now build desert camp/outposts, rinthi hidey-holes, things like that.
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Post by sirra on Dec 16, 2016 16:14:49 GMT -5
I want to say that as it stands you can now get an outpost/camp put in if you put in the work using the same guidelines they use for the MMH building system. Did I dream that? Someone can go look it up I suppose. I swear I saw that you can now build desert camp/outposts, rinthi hidey-holes, things like that. Honestly, in the eight years since they started jerking us around about it, I could've traveled to an apocalyptic part of Somalia and hand-built my own desert outpost. And it would probably have been time better spent than chopping agafari logs.
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Post by desertman on Dec 16, 2016 16:33:48 GMT -5
I want to say that as it stands you can now get an outpost/camp put in if you put in the work using the same guidelines they use for the MMH building system. Did I dream that? Someone can go look it up I suppose. I swear I saw that you can now build desert camp/outposts, rinthi hidey-holes, things like that. Honestly, in the eight years since they started jerking us around about it, I could've traveled to an apocalyptic part of Somalia and hand-built my own desert outpost. And it would probably have been time better spent than chopping agafari logs. I get what you are saying but I believe this was a fairly recent change, this year in fact. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I am saying it's a step in the right direction to at least have something outlined in the rules for doing it now.
Before it was almost if not entirely a question of, "Does the right staffer like me to take on this project on my behalf?".
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2016 11:40:32 GMT -5
I think the ED had a good run. I like the option of the mobile gypsy style of play being available for merchant houses. It lets them move the whole clan to a new location and spices things up. It helps if they have a good IC reason to be moving around. Also I think it's realistic, based on the dune trader roots of the merchant houses, they have huge wagon fleets but this part of the game is often unrepresented. It's a shame Tuluk is closed because that leaves Luir's and Red Storm Village as the only other major destinations.Needless to say, the game needs more places to travel to. It would seem staff feel the game world needs to be consolidated to just one city, which depresses me. It's too bad Tuluk isn't completely different from Allanak, in it needing PCs based there to support it and any clans there (templars/nobles/merchant house ppl.) Maybe staff could get away with not having some clans in the north/south. They'd probably get more interest in clan roles and participation if they let players choose the clans that were open, and they'd probably perform better because it's a role/clan they are excited to be a part of.
I believe the game needs more places to travel to. It would seem staff feel the game world needs to be consolidated to just one city, which depresses me. It's too bad Tuluk isn't completely different from Allanak, in it needing PCs based there to support it and any clans there (templars/nobles/merchant house ppl.) Maybe staff could get away with not having some clans in the north/south. They'd probably get more interest in clan roles and participation if they let players choose the clans that were open, and they'd probably perform better because it's a role/clan they are excited to be a part of.
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seuly
Clueless newb
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Post by seuly on Dec 27, 2016 16:04:27 GMT -5
Did they for cereal nix all hunter branches? Df. Who will get materials for we spammers now?
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Post by desertman on Dec 27, 2016 16:42:37 GMT -5
Yes they did, I made a post about it previously, so I'm just going to re-paste it here:
The closure of the hunting divisions for the merchant Houses is interesting.
I like it. Playing a House hunter was always a practice in willful blindness and stupidity. You had to pretend your character wasn't smart enough to realize they were getting screwed on pay BIG TIME for what they were bringing in regularly.
Eventually the playerbase got smart enough/veteran enough that most people didn't want to play that role anymore. Basically, people just got too smart to go for that silly bullshit system.
I'm glad to see that go since apparently making it interesting and fun in terms of a role was too much work. (I would have instead changed it to make that role interesting and fun so people would want to be part of it, but, what do I know? It's easier to just take things out of the game than make them interesting/fun. See Tuluk for details.)
Either way, if it wasn't going to be changed I'm glad it was closed.
In reality nothing closed that people were really enjoying anyhow. People stopped really wanting to play in that role a long time ago, so they really just closed something nobody had any interest in anymore anyways.
No loss.
As for the comments regarding, "We wanted to increase competition/make the Houses hire outside to get their raw materials.", that's a laughably bad excuse for not just admitting you failed to make the hunter role in a House interesting enough for people to want to play in it regularly.
Houses were ALREADY regularly hiring out gathering raw materials to independents. I have an entire list of dozens upon dozens of those jobs I took as Koman Locke alone, and EVERY SINGLE TIME I was told it was because, "I just can't find any good hunters who will join my House.".
This wasn't done to create competition/force Houses to outsource hunting jobs. They were already being forced to do that and that has been the landscape for a very long time.
This was done because it was a dead uninspiring role and it was easier to close it than fix it.
I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out the truth through the veil of bullshit that was slung up to try and make this look nicer/prettier than it is.
Good change though, even if the reason given for it wasn't truthful.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2016 19:03:14 GMT -5
I kind of wish they wouldn't have closed the hunter branches, and only let the houses buy from outsiders, this way they could see which role the game world was better able to support. In effect showing the proof in the pudding to how the best way to do things is. This way if someone wanted to hire some hunters, they could. It wouldn't be another limit put on the "little bossses" (middle management) of the GMHs.
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seuly
Clueless newb
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Post by seuly on Dec 27, 2016 22:04:10 GMT -5
I liked playing grubby hunters.
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