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Post by supahotgal on Jan 25, 2017 0:04:48 GMT -5
For those of you still playing on Armageddon, you may've heard about this. For those of you not on Arm, the way it works is that players are now being asked by staff to run their own plots. The better the plots are, the better the chances of you winning the raffle, and the higher prizes you can win from it. Depending on how well they do on making the plots, those said players can win the following: - A custom scar/tattoo to show an emblem of being staffers' #1 whipping boy/girl
- A vanity item to show that the staffers stand like Skylar Grey over a dubious college girl
- A much less obviousness of staff-on-player pseudo slavery via a skill bump
I wanna hear about it from the good people of the shadow board, cause I honestly hate this since I'm incapable of holding anything up.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2017 0:47:13 GMT -5
Well, people already think small in this game and this just keeps them thinking smaller. If staff won't shake up the game, players aren't going to shake up the game when they're organizing some useless hunt for a raffle.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
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Post by Jeshin on Jan 25, 2017 1:16:40 GMT -5
There's a few things I will say about this and please note I have not played Armageddon in quite awhile, I am officially banned, and I'm not as up to date on stuff as I probably should be to comment. That being said lets layout some of the issues with this new move.
+ Incentivizing Plots
How many staff are there? How many SRs for 3 spheres (Allanak, Luirs, Tribal Lands)? What rank can a PC reach before being force stored for accumulating to much power/station to be around the plebs? What counts as a plot, like is changing a curtain to a solid door a PLOT or still impossible?
I ask these questions because plot can mean a lot of things. Plot can be progressing your personal story, the story of a small group of people, or providing content for multiple clans to interact in. Lets use an anecdotal list of "plots" from Elrum 'Banished' Irofel. Elrum was a Circle Bard and via animations and RP with Youko he learned that petitioning Chosen/Faithful for 'donations' to the Circle was something the Masters liked. So he often concocted situations or RP hooks to encourage donations to the circle (like offering to look into lore on a subject that Chosen didn't have a book about). That is a personal plot. Then you have something like the original Citizen's Call which was a plot developed by Elrum to get back into the good graces of the Circle after banishment #1. This 'plot' was about training Tuluki's on how to fight Kryl and thus lower the deathrate. It had multiple clans involved since someone could choose to sponsor it and hold contests after training and blah blah blah. That is a very rudimentary recurring plot that involves multiple organizations. It allows them to push their own plots, but doesn't have much substance itself. Finally you have "dramatic plot" wherein a bard was killed in Allanak, Elrum traveled there to learn what happened and possibly assassinate a noble. This was a plot/adventure in the more traditional sense that there was a clear goal, parties, and the outcome led to future conflict.
Now the majority of these were done with little to no staff help. If the staff are SUPPORTING a plot you can do stuff like organize a hunt for a spider/kryl nest with dynamic world/npc responses. Clear the land/desert near a location and change the room descs to progress some future agenda (like clearing away a portion of the Grey Forest to setup a well (or whatever). Investigate ruins for cool shit and get dynamic world responses and you know... artifacts/relics worth dragging a party of people out to search around for.
What kind of plots are the staff incentivizing with this reward program and why don't they just SUPPORT plots which is the real incentivization that player's want. They want to make a difference in the world, leave a little mark, do something different than hunt tembo #908471098741 and kill weird kryl #4129874190874. Incentivize by enabling not rewarding or you know do both.
+ The Rewards
Why is this shit in a raffle at all? Why aren't staff just giving out custom scars whenever a custom scar is warrented or a custom tattoo. Like it's not as if these aren't very easy to sdesc/ldesc on the fly. What's a vanity item? How about just providing unique items when appropriate to the plots being run? If I run some kind of Merchant House search for lost whatever... Do I need to win a raffle to get a mcguffin for my merchant house to find? If I don't win the raffle will I get called a failure? Not that failing is bad storywise, but it's worth asking.
+ Leadership Roles/Sponsor Roles
Isn't the carrot/stick method of promoting plots within the playerbase to grant cool and limited character roles within the templerate, merchant houses, and tribes to people trusted by staff to be a plot mover? The stick being if you suck at it eventually you get replaced or something?
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098
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Post by punished ppurg on Jan 25, 2017 2:20:28 GMT -5
I'd like to comment on an anonymous comment on the GDB, in a locked thread: gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,52147.0.html This is tangentially related to this conversation as this is related to the whole "rat out the cheaters" type meme taking root which apparently uses the same pseudo-karma the raffle system is? Anyhow: Glad to see we're living rent-free in the minds of some people out there. I can say with quite some reflection: over the past ~2 years, I have never seen or contributed to any plot to kill any character in-game via OOC collaboration through the shadowboard or our discord. If someone has something to bring up, please correct me on this. There was one time we all had a laugh as two guys on spur of the moment (and caused by IC communication) dragged a girly-man up Hathor's trying to bait Twitchy to attack him, and had an even more terrible laugh about a month later when we realized he was a mindbender and we had been this close to killing a max-karma character via Rinth-Shanghai'ing. It was a murderous, corrupt, betraying moment that frankly made a boring event so much more fun (sorry Ru, I still love you). If anyone believes we as a collective are taking the time to scout out and plot to kill your character, feel free to prove it to me. Unless the character we're talking about is Armali.... I could never dream of killing you, bae. 
I agree with Jeshin that the idea of a raffle is ludicrous, and that these rewards should be handed out as liberally as possible as a reward for anything. It legitimately takes 5 minutes to do it, less if you know what you're doing. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2017 5:18:23 GMT -5
Having a big announcement about raffles builds a sort of expectation that there's going to be staff supported plots every month. I hope the staff member(s) in charge of this don't burn out or get busy IRL (and just fade away). It happens all the time where staff members go AWOL and the next thing you know staff are looking for new members. Now because of the way it has been introduced, plot raffles seem to be some sort of new institution, kind of like extended subguilds, and player created merchant houses. It seems as if there are some kind of permanent fixture which is a bad idea. I guess it'd help if staff made it clear that this raffle is not permanent and only around as long as staff are willing to do it. If raffles and mandatory staff support for player plots on a regular basis becomes a chore, because staff are committed to support plots, even if the plots submitted suck, it could degrade the quality of those plots. I think staff perform better when they get to choose the plots they support, this does create an air of favoritism, but that's life. Maybe they will still be choosing the plots they like, and only allow -those- plots into the raffle because.... are they really going to make even stupid plots that they don't even want to support win the raffle?
With the advent of the raffle, it stands to reason that these plots will then be limited and players will know that their plots don't have a chance unless they're the raffle winners. I suspect players will put off any plots they'd normally try to push and support because of a lack of interest from other players. Other players aren't going to want to get involved in a lame plot someone without staff support is working towards, they'll be much more willing to connect themselves with the raffle winning staff supported plots because they've got staff support.
It's good staff are trying to get players to try to involve other people who make things happen, but they should just support every plot they can, and reward those movers and shakers who drive the plots with karma and enable them to create more plots.
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Post by jcarter on Jan 25, 2017 8:31:16 GMT -5
I'd like to comment on an anonymous comment on the GDB, in a locked thread: gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,52147.0.html This is tangentially related to this conversation as this is related to the whole "rat out the cheaters" type meme taking root which apparently uses the same pseudo-karma the raffle system is? Anyhow: lmao, i read that and I'm like who cares nerd. you'd think they were talking about something of substance, like we were their coworkers airing their dirty laundry at the watercooler. they're demanding a list of reasons why they should stay and play a video game because people on an offsite forum have talked about their video game character and do not like them. either play because you're having fun or don't because people talking about you on the internet somehow makes a video game unenjoyable for you but jesus get over yourself. bonus from the op: yeah totally not pointing any fingers here, just namedropping jcarter's forums, posting weblinks to it, giving stats on the number of unique logins, and mentioning specific discord servers. nope not finger pointing at all. but that answers why we got a small uptick in registrations over the last couple days though lol. |
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Post by desertman on Jan 25, 2017 10:15:44 GMT -5
Just going to drop in my brief thoughts on this.
It is a terrible idea to try and reward people who normally wouldn't create plots to get them to try and create plots.
You don't do this for the same reason you don't offer Bob The Janitor a bonus if he will try to construct a house for you in an earthquake zone.
People who were going to run plots and were the sorts of people who SHOULD be running plots to begin with are ALREADY running said plots.
Why? Because they enjoy it and they are good at it. The reward for them has and always will be running the plot because that is their "thing".
The people who weren't capable of or interested in running plots before SHOULD NOT be incentivized to try and start running plots. If they were the sorts of people who had the ability or the genuine interest required to run a good plot....they would already be running them.
It's just that simple.
You don't take someone who has only ever had an interest in being a player and say to them, "Hey, if you will be the DM I'll give you $50 even though to date you've had the option but have never had any interest in being the DM.". Guaranteed shitty campaign coming up.
In reality I don't think this will incentivize any of these people to run plots. At least, I hope it doesn't.
In reality I think the only thing this ACTUALLY is, is a reward system for the people who would have already been running plots anyways.....which I back wholeheartedly.
The best possible outcome here? This won't create any plots that wouldn't have already existed to begin with but will make those regular plot runners feel like they are appreciated, which is nice.
The worst possible outcome obviously is that people who have no business trying to run plots try to run them just to get a reward on a future character and you end up with a handful of shit-tier plots from scrubs who are only doing it for the payoff. Please no. Everyone has seen THAT LEADER who is a boring piece of shit who never does anything and never comes up with anything interesting that you want to be a part of and you wonder, "Why did you even take this job if you aren't actually interested in being around to do it well?". This is basically an incentive program to create THAT GUY/GAL in bulk and reward them for doing it.
My only hope is it doesn't take off and just works to reward people who would have created the plots anyways with no reward involved. (Which is what I expect to happen anyways.) |
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Post by lyse on Jan 25, 2017 11:01:18 GMT -5
Bad idea and here's why: Contrivance. When I left the game I saw mainly players that were waiting for something to happen, players that really just enjoyed going through the motions of doing things on a timer, really to no end result, a lot of meta "I don't wanna do that." and a few newbies. Pretty much a text based MMO with little characterization. Not fun! Offering incentives for plot isn't going to change that and the rewards are pretty crappy to boot. So bad! All it's going to do is make people come up with more bad plots with the hope that they get something out of it. I say hope because of that word raffle, which is only going to piss more people off when they don't get rewarded for their efforts. It's really just more of the same thing they've been doing.
See, what's wrong with Arm is staff is pulling in one direction, one they aren't really letting players know about and players are pulling in another direction and it's just not meshing well at all. Players play for a lot of different reasons, that's obvious. So how do you as staff mobilize players to play how you want? Establish expectations(clear expectations that make sense), lead by example, do things that are noticeable (I don't mean adding colors either).
How do you do that?
By telling a story. No seriously, by telling a story. At this point, there seem to be more players that want to be TOLD a story than want to tell a story, which is another reason why this attempt is doomed to fail. So you have a game where you have all these storytellers, with no story to tell. Since the game is so secretive, I'm sure there's a reason why this is happening, but that has to change. All they have to do is provide a framework of a story and some good pacing, players will jump all over that. From what I have seen, any hint of a story will wake up the most lethargic, going through the motions player. I've seen it happen. I've seen players that seemed like they were grunt and nod, tabbed out watching netflix players wake the hell up.
Let's use the "Closing of Tuluk" as an example. Staff decided to close Tuluk, they even made a half assed story about it. Cool, I don't judge, it was something. So something weird was going on. People were going up there to see what was going on. What should've happened should've been clan storytellers should've had a storyline that dealt with that event and it should've been far reaching all the way down to Allanak. It could've been something like, there is an incursion into 'naki territory by crab heads for AoD. There are rebels that need Arms for Salarr. There's hints that someone in Kurac is a crab head. There is a psion in the pah for d-elves. In other words TELL that story. Players will come up with their own plots dealing with said story on their own...or they won't. It's ok if they won't, because all the while, staff are animating PC's to tell that story, giving paced out tasks. Instead you got a fishbowl plot.
The last thing you want to do is say "Here are the keys, drive where you want." People say they want that, but most people really don't and every time they do it, the same people are going to take the keys. You absolutely don't want that. You want something that's going to include everybody, from the player that logs on twice a week to the player that logs on several times a day to skill up to the people that are on ten hours a day.
This just isn't going to work.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2017 13:17:00 GMT -5
The last thing you want to do is say "Here are the keys, drive where you want." Staff keeps handing the players the keys and the players immediately want to drive on the highways and interstates and go places. Staff then takes back the keys and says, no, we just wanted you to drive around the neighborhood. Players are like, fuck that, I've walked this neighborhood why would I want to drive around it? I want to go somewhere new. Staff doesn't respond and instead look to pass the keys to the next person. |
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Post by fatfinger on Jan 25, 2017 17:29:43 GMT -5
I'm more of a follower than a leader, but I've been part of making a few plots happen. From my experience every time staff become involved in something I die. Often times this happens so quickly I have no idea what's happening until it's already over, probably because that makes it gritty and hardcore. At this point no amount of reward is going to make me report a plot to staff, because no custom scar is worth the risk of them fucking everything up or deciding to cancel the plot because they dislike it halfway through.
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Post by lyse on Jan 25, 2017 18:04:37 GMT -5
The last thing you want to do is say "Here are the keys, drive where you want." Staff keeps handing the players the keys and the players immediately want to drive on the highways and interstates and go places. Staff then takes back the keys and says, no, we just wanted you to drive around the neighborhood. Players are like, fuck that, I've walked this neighborhood why would I want to drive around it? I want to go somewhere new. Staff doesn't respond and instead look to pass the keys to the next person. Right! And that sounds exactly like what they're going to do! |
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Post by BitterFlashback on Jan 25, 2017 19:33:32 GMT -5
At this point, there seem to be more players that want to be TOLD a story than want to tell a story, which is another reason why this attempt is doomed to fail. I'd go so far to say that is the biggest reason this will fail. That one sentence sums up the staff reaping what they've sewn with the unsalvageable state of the game. So you have a game where you have all these storytellers, with no story to tell. Since the game is so secretive, I'm sure there's a reason why this is happening, but that has to change. It really is baffling that so much of a storyteller's time is eaten up with helping other staffers write stories for the staff. |
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Post by lyse on Jan 25, 2017 20:20:54 GMT -5
I'd go so far to say that is the biggest reason this will fail. That one sentence sums up the staff reaping what they've sewn with the unsalvageable state of the game. Well, no I wouldn't say the game is unsalvageable. They need to go to where the players are and SHOW them what they want if they aren't going to tell them. But really who has time for that? Just say what you want? This Wizard of Oz, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" thing is kind of old. It really is baffling that so much of a storyteller's time is eaten up with helping other staffers write stories for the staff. Wellllllllll...I'm not going to say that doesn't happen. But since there's no proof, let's not say that. Since you know, we're all people that hate the game and are nothing but negative, let's not feed that monster. I just think they have some really bad rules in place tying storytellers' hands is all. |
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bobo
Clueless newb
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Post by bobo on Jan 25, 2017 21:47:34 GMT -5
You know, I try not to be a total negative cunt, since it's kind of a cliche on these boards, but come on. This comes across like staff is trying to prove to each other and themselves that people are having fun, and they're doing that by forcing people to fill out more paperwork for staff approval about how much fun they're having.
Psychological research tends to suggest external motivation is self-defeating in the long-term. What is the end-game here? Everyone in the MUD filling out reports on every hunting party to try to mooch plot tickets? If the primary reward for being in a plot is not the fun of roleplaying, what is the point?
As for the very valid point of "can't staff just write a custom scar?" My sense is that the next step is that such requests get a response of "You should enter the plot raffle! Your request has been resolved."
In actual good news though, crafting is being upgraded!
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Post by desertman on Jan 26, 2017 10:32:17 GMT -5
I hate to say this since it sounds horrible, but it is the truth.
I'm disinclined to inform staff of my plotlines where staff involvement isn't ABSOLUTELY a necessity that can't be avoided. I will give them what I'm required to give them for a role, but I'm not going to volunteer up anything to "bring them in" typically where it isn't a requirement.
(This varies from staffer to staffer. If I'm in a clan where I trust the staffer, I will help them out more in being involved. If I'm in a clan where I know the staffer is a piece of shit....I'm going to give you the bare minimum required to fulfill my responsibilities. I'm still going to fulfill them, but, I'm not going out of my way for you. You are the one who decides what you get based on your behavior, sorry.)
For example, if I'm playing a sponsored leader, I will keep them well informed. That's a requirement. If I'm not playing a leader, I'm not going to volunteer up my character's personal plots....A) They probably don't care much. B) I don't want them to start caring much.
In my experience it almost never turns into a good a thing once they get involved for my PC. There's this mindset among many of the staff that they exist to make things hard for your character.
"It's a hard game bro. That means I have to make things hard for you. Are you succeeding? Nah bro, gotta' make it hard or I'm not staffing right.".
They don't say it that way, but, that's the end result if it is said that way or not a lot of the time.
MOST of the time I just want to be left alone and allowed to play the game until the time comes staff is a requirement to move forward. Until that time comes however, nah, you can keep your scars and raffles and what not. It's just not worth the hassle typically for me personally to involve you.
That isn't the product of anything but dozens upon dozens of staff interactions in the game and hundreds of player reports and responses.
Sure, I've had some positive interactions and results from reports with staff. I'm not saying I haven't. But, the scales are absolutely titled FAR more to one side than the other. It's a question of simple math. The math as it relates to the typical results simply doesn't make it worth the risk.
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