grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 12, 2017 13:35:12 GMT -5
Oh, wait, you couldn't because she was Vittor's girlfriend at the time, outside hires are ok, being a blatant, sexist dick about it is not, especially when actual PLAYERS have to work to get to the poine where the militia is not an insta-death-squad, which, let's face it, no matter how many battles you fight your way through you're running for the rinth and hoping an NPC Templar doesn't show up to mon fireball you.
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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 Mar 12, 2017 13:38:25 GMT -5
Edit your posts, G-Vegas. Please for the love of God
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Post by BitterFlashback on Mar 12, 2017 14:02:25 GMT -5
grumbleCould we not have 6 back-to-back posts? You're pushing parts of the discussion onto totally different pages. If people haven't replied to you yet, please just edit your new thoughts into your most recent existing post. lyse denial Bitter it's a culture of denial. Hey, you're not going to get an argument from me on that being a heavy issue. I'd only debate how much that problem weighs next to the gorillas and elephants in the room. The second reason was the player-staff divide. Why do you believe this exists and what do you believe led to it? You know my beliefs on the answers to those questions. When you start denying a die hard like Reiloth...well, that says it all right there. He's what I call a core player, when they start dropping, you're getting close to a death spiral. When Lizzie has a meltdown, we're in the death throes of the game. I'm with you there, though I suspect for a lot of the people in the sister thread of this one, there's not going to be another open dialog with the staff. I think when they're fed up they're just going to quit. When you've got Nergal saying in the same thread that it's unfair to staff that A Girl didn't give the full context of an event, that posting logs is not a bannable offense, and then ban her for posting a log that gave full context of that same event, the message to the players is pretty clear. "We won't be held to anything we say, and your treatment is arbitrary." -- The StaffBut this is also part of it. The game hasn't adapted well to an aging playerbase. Sure twenty year old me would roll with a ridiculous death, a staff oops, a fucked up, terse mail from a staffer. I WAS TWENTY! One year I only had class on Monday and Tuesday, guess what I did the rest of the week? Arm all the time. Forty year old me, with a son, a husband and a job....um not so much. I'm not going to take a staff oops, or walking into a deathroom, or a brush off with a few tears (Yes, I really cried after a character death when I was younger) and reapplying. My time is valuable too, just as valuable as a unpaid volunteer staff. So when I see a discussion board with little discussion of the game I'm playing, I feel like I'm wasting my time playing a character in a flat world, having flat discussions with staff....well, I'm going to spend my time doing something else, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Twenty year old me was ok with Overlords doing shitty things, Forty year old me....nah bruh, you got some explaining to do and it better be good too. If the staff only learned this from the thread, it'd still be a net win for the game.
Jeshin So I've had a few conversations with Bitterflashback about his theory regarding the two primary factions of PLAYERS and the issues they cause with the game. Due to personal inability to sufficiently consolidate his idea into something concrete from a game design perspective, I will instead be offering an alternative outline of the Armageddon culture and what is 'killing the game'. This isn't a dissenting opinion from Bitters since the player archetypes he laid out can still be a social cause of these problems, but alas I find myself unable to really write up a compelling post within that speculative framework. The part of game design you have to apply it to are staff policies towards hiring, arbitration of disputes, and public rules. The least stimulating parts of game design, but important parts nonetheless. While I don't disagree with your analysis, I think you've left out some rather important details that relate to this thread. I'd like to pose some questions to you so you can tie your points into a clearer agreement, disagreement, or alternate hypothesis in regards to the main discussions. 1. Dwindling Player Numbers The engine that drives any game is the player population. This is a cyclical benefit and problem. When you login and see a game with a high number of players you think there is a good chance of interaction and it is popular. If you login and see a game with a low number of players you think you might not have much interaction when you're free to play or maybe the game is dying. If Armageddon is avging 30 people it's not "to low" but it's certainly not the 70+ it used to be. Low numbers but high quality isn't really a good thing. It might be for a short period of time but players have real life happen and if you're not replenishing your playerbase with new curious users than you're going to continue to slip down the avg user count as you "age out" of your players. This is why quantity has its own quality, as someone said, somewhere. 1a) Why did Arm's numbers begin a steady decline between 2014 and now, and what caused that/those event(s) to happen? 1b) Why isn't Arm retaining the (presumably) younger players who are trying the game? They've been competing with online games for 2 decades, regardless of what the Flat Earth Society may say. 1c) Many of the older players leaving Arm don't cite age as their main reason and they still play games recreationally in their free time, so why not Arm? 2. Problematic Staffers There is a difference between a staff culture and problematic staffers. Armageddon has decades under its belt and a cheating admin or a textual asshole or an apologist isn't enough of a blip on the radar to affect the likely 50+ staffers that have worked on the game at one point or another. The biggest problem with problematic staffers is that historically they have been fairly prominent within the hierarchy of the staff. If they did not hold significant position themselves they had the blessings of the higher ups with their actions (such as the plot to invade luirs). 2a) Some of the most famous problem staffers were being known problems prior to Arm's playerbase peaking. Why do you believe this is a bigger problem in recent years? 2b) Why do you believe Arm has had a nearly unbroken chain of terrible hires? 3. Staff Culture The staff have withdrawn from the players, learned less is more when discussing sensitive topics or dealing with player complaints. They've adopted a "rip the bandaid off quick" approach to sensitive problems. They've adopted a single voice approach when they need to depict the staff as united on a topic. The staff culture has evolved to protect its shortcomings instead of removing them. You've explained how staff culture continues and how it evolves. You've pointed out that the staff have withdrawn from players, become terse, and project unanimity, but you have not explained what their culture is. So let me try to get you to speculate on that in a way that meshes with the topic... In the context of what Armageddon MUD staff culture teaches an individual staffer: 3a) What do the staff believe their role is in relation to the game itself? 3b) What do the staff believe their responsibilities are in relation to the players? 3c) What do the staff believe is their relationship to the playerbase? 3d) Regarding 3a-c, which of these are problematic and why? 4. RP Culture This is the player portion of the game. RP culture is more or less what the norm is. Do people say (nodding) Yeah. Lets spar. or do people say (looking from right to left, his hand against the hilt of ~obsidian.sword) We need to get off the street and findout what shit we're in. I think they're watching us... Do people go out and spar every 90 min or hunt beetle #984731290874097 or drink beer #417329471278041 hoping for something to fall into their laps? Do they turn hunting beetle #infinity into an adventure? Do they say fuck beetles lets find steinal, or go on a long hunting trip for some character development or gather a bag of spice to smuggle into Lord fancybritches for some money to buy an assassin for Bynner Dickweed. RP culture is important because when you go from proactive to reactive, everyone is waiting, everyone is at a standstill, and the onus falls onto staff and sponsored roles to provide content instead of people driving content themselves. A wait and see RP culture can be ineffective at hooking newbies to staying with the game and cause veterans to turn into bitter vets (as EvE Online refers to burnout players). 4a) Why do you believe the RP culture went from active to waiting? What caused this shift? 4b) Staff have actively targeted players who are active, as countless topics on this board will attest. If you have not previously addressed this question: why do you believe staff have established themselves as a bottleneck on activity? 5. Uncompetitive I do not mean uncompetitive in the sense that the game doesn't promote competition. I mean uncompetitive because Armageddon is no longer playing to its strengths. MUDs are a unique medium they offer all the creativity of being writer within a setting with none of the drawbacks of having to render 3D or even 2D models of these stories. It is the high of storytelling. It is the feeling of being able to talk to people about an RP scene from years ago and have them talk back to you about it like it really happened... Because it was a shared memory, something unique at some point that is a shared experience. How does Armageddon push stories and character moments? How are the RPTs and HRPTs run by staff really branching away from repetition and cliche to try and do something different? Why can't spider nest RPT #9841709437 really not be about spiders at all but mcguffin or some mercenaries stirring up trouble to bribe the templerate, or whatever... When you play Armageddon you should never feel like your time would be better spent playing another MMO or single player video game. You should always feel like the MUD you are playing is exactly the kind of experience you're looking for. Not a game, not a book, but something where you have agency to tell your story. 5a) How did Armageddon become this way? 5b) Why is it staff prefer not to do what you're suggesting anymore?
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 12, 2017 15:06:37 GMT -5
All I can say is aw shit it's on, and grab the popcorn. You don't have to like me, Bitter, only accept me as inevitable.
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my2sids
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 341 
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Post by my2sids on Mar 12, 2017 15:19:45 GMT -5
BitterFlashbackLate to reply, sorry. I'd say that I'm enjoying the game because of a few things. 1.) My dealings with staff for the past year have been respectful and congenial. I have only had issues or disagreements with players. 2.) From my observation it appears as though staff are putting "the right" players into leadership sponsored roles for the most part. I think effectively appointing key player leadership is one of the most important things you can do as staff. 3.) I don't play more than 15 hours a week and average 5-10. 4.) I have chosen to play around players that I enjoy playing with. 5.) I would say a lot of leaders are being enabled by staff for their plots currently. There's a lot to do if you care to play a minion. 6.) I only invest to read the OOC forum on the GDB.
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Post by BitterFlashback on Mar 12, 2017 15:36:59 GMT -5
All I can say is aw shit it's on, and grab the popcorn. You don't have to like me, Bitter, only accept me as inevitable. I don't hate you or hate what you're saying, I just would appreciate you condensing your responses into fewer consecutive posts. I'm just glad you eventually responded. No worries on the time delay. I am very curious about one thing you said... 5.) I would say a lot of leaders are being enabled by staff for their plots currently. There's a lot to do if you care to play a minion. This is contrary to the last I'd heard/experienced regarding staff policies towards leaders. That information may have become dated if I am interpreting what you're saying the way I think you mean it. Given that, would you elaborate on two things here? Specifically: 1) What do you mean when you say "plot" in this sentence? Like, what's the least important or least complicated thing you'd call a plot, and what if anything do you have to do bureaucratically to get it allowed/enabled by staff? 2) What actions staff are taking to enable leaders' plots? I don't need specifics; giving specifics might get you in trouble with the staff. A list of generalized actions would be appreciated. |
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Post by lyse on Mar 12, 2017 15:49:22 GMT -5
Why do you believe this exists and what do you believe led to it? You know my beliefs on the answers to those questions. Why does the player-staff divide exist? I'm not 100% sure, this is one of the few games I've played where it's been like this though. But let me back up to something you said a looong time ago, something Nessalin said OOCly about the game. I had an idea about what it was, but whatever it was it was pretty damning. I got the feeling whatever he said is definitely a part of the staff culture, but you never said so I can only guess. My closest guess is they really don't think much of players in general. I'm leaving it that vague because I don't know what he really said. From everything I've seen so far, I can't be that far off the mark. A lot of it is also the man behind the curtain thing that most RPI's have, that's really an outdated modality. I feel like it's always been this way and there's some serious psychological shit behind it. I could pull up some things one of the original creators of the game said a long time ago about the game. But nobody really seems interested in the history of the game, I'd argue that the history can be important as to why certain things are the way they are. |
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 12, 2017 17:39:14 GMT -5
My2sids, I am glad you are currently happy with staff. The one time I got to work for you both I and my character were pleased.
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my2sids
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 341
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Post by my2sids on Mar 12, 2017 19:14:57 GMT -5
All I can say is aw shit it's on, and grab the popcorn. You don't have to like me, Bitter, only accept me as inevitable. I don't hate you or hate what you're saying, I just would appreciate you condensing your responses into fewer consecutive posts. I'm just glad you eventually responded. No worries on the time delay. I am very curious about one thing you said... 5.) I would say a lot of leaders are being enabled by staff for their plots currently. There's a lot to do if you care to play a minion. This is contrary to the last I'd heard/experienced regarding staff policies towards leaders. That information may have become dated if I am interpreting what you're saying the way I think you mean it. Given that, would you elaborate on two things here? Specifically: 1) What do you mean when you say "plot" in this sentence? Like, what's the least important or least complicated thing you'd call a plot, and what if anything do you have to do bureaucratically to get it allowed/enabled by staff?
2) What actions staff are taking to enable leaders' plots? I don't need specifics; giving specifics might get you in trouble with the staff. A list of generalized actions would be appreciated.
Bolded parts I'm responding to. 1.) Plots as in, staff-supported NPCs being animated. PC leadership and otherwise at ends with each other--competing, trying to kill, politicking, building, exploring, etc. 2.) Allowing leaders to do what they want and pursue reasonable IC solutions to problems. Giving them tools to move forward instead of "silence". |
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 13, 2017 14:47:25 GMT -5
To be honest I was being tugged seven different ways at once at all times by people who wanted me to play with them (I usually said no and just did my own thing). I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but there's no way I could do all of it at once even if I wanted to. What I don't think staff are wise enough to accept is that just about everyone who plays this game discusses it with people who can appreciate the plots and stories, and that as a consequence of people figuring out who I played/am playing I am currently in many people's buddy lists, some of these additions being due to shadowboards meltdowns where people were like, OMFG that was YOU! This is not like I just have one player I talk to, there are many, many more than they would suspect. To root out that crowd, you would have to ban all but a very small handful of players, you can't just make assumptions as to who.
So I hear quite a lot more than most people expect. They think I'm insane and making assumptions, but I can't very well show the evidence without betraying trust. So all I can say is, I know there's a LOT more going on than the shadowboards will reveal, and people do talk to select people. EVERYONE does it. If they keep banning people for OOC communication, they're going to end up with an empty game. People would actually talk a lot less if there weren't something fucked up to share.
You'd probably be surprised by the sheer volume of character apps, mastercraft apps, and logs that are sent to me before they are sent to staff. I've rewritten a lot (though not a particularly significant percentage, and never altered logs but just read them) of content before staff ever even sees it. Yet they think they're the only ones who know what's going on. Their current approach indicates that they are not yet aware of the scope of what they are messing with by messing with players who are quite honestly doing nothing wrong. Their minds would likely be crushed by the sheer AMOUNT of wrong they are in their thinking.
Most players are grown, mature adults who can make their own decisions (myself not necessarily included) and are worthy of the respect due to that. They are not children, or cats to be herded, they are not toys to be smashed against eachother while making crushy-noises. They are not to be singled out by players, or staff, for reasons that are quite well described in the quickstart guide and documents. If staff can be trusted with OOC information, players should be trusted to share that information in their personal lives and niches as they see fit. I understand the basis of why it should not be out in the open, but I also understand that many can seperate IC and OOC information, and indeed, that scum-sucking asswad that killed your last character may be your best friend next time around (or vice-versa).
I guess this tl;dr spiel can be rather easily summed up by, staff aren't the only ones with a crystal ball, and they need to accept that and correct their approach and behavior before it bites them in the ass.
EDIT: Edited to add that I don't think I know "everything" that's going on, but I can spot a pattern when I see it, and if you think when you mistreat a player that no one finds out, you are dead wrong. Chances are, they told somebody they trust. This goes not just for staff, but also for players. So please, be a dick within the boundaries of the documention, and stop being tryhards.
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Post by supahotgal on Mar 13, 2017 15:14:10 GMT -5
So I was looking on the GDB for a bit, and I came across something like this.  You may have to right click and select open in new tab, I'm not sure how to insert images properly. I believe that it highly matches on how things are going right now however. It probably will be deleted fairly soon, but surprisingly, there were little to no replies regarding it on the thread it was posted on. |
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 13, 2017 15:29:29 GMT -5
 Like so? EDIT: I don't know about anyone else, but in my plots, as a house player, I look for something more like this: And less like Noted Liar Nergal shoving his deathmetal-studded cock down everyone involved's throat because the world is ruff. EDIT AGAIN: He must have had a trigger set to ding when I PKed someone. There were reasons, reasons I'm sure he did not look into at all. It was entirely justified for my PC to be doing that at the time. I don't go around killing every player I see, I do it as a last resort. |
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Post by sirra on Mar 13, 2017 17:09:37 GMT -5
So I was looking on the GDB for a bit, and I came across something like this. You may have to right click and select open in new tab, I'm not sure how to insert images properly. I believe that it highly matches on how things are going right now however. It probably will be deleted fairly soon, but surprisingly, there were little to no replies regarding it on the thread it was posted on. It minimizes a valid discussion about the corruption, dissimulation and censoring cowardice of staff, by making it seem as just another nerdragey neckbeard argument that proves how silly we all are. In that sense, even the low bar that the image represents suggests a greater humanity and normality, than staff actually possesses. Which is just mind-numbing, condescending, mean-spirited incompetence. |
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 13, 2017 17:50:40 GMT -5
To be brutally honest and someone contrary to the spirit of my rants, I, too, have noticed what My2sids is talking about IG. It is a very serious improvement. I don't have to hate everything about the game and staff, and never claimed to, only a few key issues they seem to be missing the chopping block on.
EDIT: Plus, he has to take the time to make sure any of his posts aren't something he'll be immediately crucified on, particularly with staff. After they fucked over Iamjacksopinion over a post about the crossbow skill, it pays to be wary.
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Post by sirra on Mar 13, 2017 20:41:16 GMT -5
To be brutally honest and someone contrary to the spirit of my rants, I, too, have noticed what My2sids is talking about IG. It is a very serious improvement. I don't have to hate everything about the game and staff, and never claimed to, only a few key issues they seem to be missing the chopping block on. EDIT: Plus, he has to take the time to make sure any of his posts aren't something he'll be immediately crucified on, particularly with staff. After they fucked over Iamjacksopinion over a post about the crossbow skill, it pays to be wary. I'm not sure why my2sids thought that was a big revelation. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've always taken it for granted that Armageddon had a lot of great players. It still does, though there are less and less of them everyday. I've mentored like 20-30 newbies in one capacity or another, and I always hoped they'd have nothing but fun and a minimum of exposure to staff. The playerbase is the only reason the vast majority of us even stuck around as long as we did. The tragedy of Armageddon is the cancerous and cliquey nature of staff culture, which either burns out or turns off anyone who might make a positive difference. That hasn't changed, and nothing my2sids has posted came anywhere near to suggesting it. The tragedy of Armageddon isn't that it's a bad game populated by bad people. The tragedy of Armageddon is that it's a great game, populated by good people (averaging out here...) but has been severely mismanaged by a fairly tiny cohort of apathetic morons, who have all the charisma and vision of a Burmese general's junta. In many ways, Armageddon is an extraordinarily unique game, because there has rarely ever been a game which managed to continue as long as it has, with such a locus of negativity at the top, and so many positive factors at the bottom, thanklessly sustaining it. Hell, most of the posts on this shadowboard have just been answering questions and helping people play the game or reminiscing about past fun. It's not even that no good people have ever tried to staff. Many have. It's just that Nessalin, Adhira and Nyr stuck around for so long, and continued to stick around, and have managed to sculpt a protege in Nergal, who manages to combine the worst personality traits of all three. (Nessalin's sheer amorality, Nyr's condescension, and Adhira's bureaucratese). Not only are these people horrible staff. I think they're probably horrible IRL too. It takes a certain degree of wretchedness to be this numb to basic concepts of fairness or justice. I've staffed games that were 2-3x larger than Armageddon, and I've never seen anything like the sheer continuity of awfulness. Like a layer of greasy oil over what was once a pristine pool. But which unlike an oil spill, seems impossible to clean up. Mostly because of Nessalin. |
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