OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257 
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Post by OT on Mar 14, 2017 21:05:40 GMT -5
RP cuts out due to people minding timers, rushing off to train or the tembo probably respawned or whatever, it feels very mechanical. If they're at 30 players at peak and 10 of them are staff, you can't tell me volunteer or not nobody has time to create a story. Even the most basic MMO has some sort of crappy story to play along with. Armageddon doesn't. The game is mostly players that enjoy minding timers and avoiding RP. Ever been out in the waste and come across a random player and they speed walk past you? Of course you have. Most people play MUDs to interact with people. Why else is that warrior wearing that jewel encrusted cod piece with other items that scroll your screen when you look at them? So you can tell them how awesome they are, so you can interact. This is a very good point. While it's not the thing killing Arm (as it's been this bad for a very long time), it does beg the question, "Why is there such a huge impediment to characters becoming skilled?" You can't even blame this one on the code; staff could make it so every skill gain is 5 or 10 points, or just manually set people to some arbitrary number. Instead, if your vision is anything other than someone who gets rolled in combat or a thief who can't steal anything or a crafter who can't make a profit, your choices are grind or fail. It definitely is not helping the game. A lot of it stems from the fact that people who join staff come disproportionately from a certain demographic of players: those who never really became famous and powerful as mortals. Time and time and time again, you see that the staff members most prone to obstructing player efforts (whether naysaying plots or slapping down "twinks") are the ones who were never renowned plot-drivers or dangerous badasses. They typically join staff because it's the only way they can really have an influence on the game, and insecurities over their non-success as players fuels their opposition to the things they failed to accomplish. This has always been the case, even before notoriously insecure and obstructionist admins took over the game. If you took any random ten staff members, probably eight or nine of them were of the Nyr-as-player variety who played meaningless nobles and the like, characters who never did anything memorable and left no meaningful legacy in the game. Of these individuals, those who become storytellers will try to interfere with player efforts and those who become coders will try to make it harder to become strong. This is, of course, also in part a product of the fact that the more ambitious and industrious players tend not to want to join staff because it would no longer be possible to play the game in the same way, but those players had nothing to do with the "stop trying too hard" sentiment that the game has harbored for the relevant span of its history (I don't consider the pre-RPI days worth talking about.) Usually, when somebody tells you to stop backstabbing NPCs or whatever, it's because they were a player who didn't have the patience, ambition or skill to do that themselves and doesn't like to see others surpass their own accomplishments. Sometimes there's a valid case of actual abuse that warrants a reaction, but usually it's just a matter of mediocre players who are worried that their own part in the game will go unnoticed if others become too powerful. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2017 22:40:40 GMT -5
The game isn't fair or objective OOCly.
I mean, with the karma system, if someone comes onto staff and makes it above the rank of storyteller... and they don't like you... then you're gonna have a bad time.
People aren't perfect. OOC prejudices enter into the equation, and, inevitably - especially when there isn't a "self-policing/regulating" culture that the new storyteller BFB quoted wished for - players will feel the brunt of it.
And, no. I still don't think Vanth (who, again, had made failed romantic advances on AIM to me) knocking me down from 8 to like 4 karma AFTER trying to ICly kill my character with half-giants was fair. Hell, even Nyr didn't think it was fair. But at least part of the punishment stuck for half a decade. Shit like that is frustrating, but I kept playing.
But then I made a Byn merchant/aggressor, was brickwalled on things like my mastercraft submissions and attempts to organize a group with a warehouse, and it seemed to me like those problems were the result of OOC attempts to prevent my character and others from accruing a greater ability the influence the game ICly.
I think that maybe the staff realized it wasn't fair, either, which is why - almost immediately after that shit - they implemented a way for players to more readily establish clans.
To me, it seems like they saw the problems that the certain group of Bynners trying to splinter off were having... and took steps to correct it.
So, just in those two instances, we see where the staff recognized that maybe things had been unfair - and worked to correct them. And, if the game is ever to start healing, that needs to start happening more often.
Instead of starting a banning campaign and trying to forcefully prevent players from dissenting, maybe people should devote that energy into making repairs and amends.
Just don't try to say the game is "too fair" or "too objective." I genuinely feel as though - in recent history anyway - that isn't the case.
Anyway, at the end of the day, thinking about all of this shit just makes me sad. Failure to communicate, compromise, and, just in general, treat other people as decent human beings is, in part, why we're still having discussions like this. There have been cases where the staff dropped the ball in big ways, and, unfortunately, they are usually reluctant to admit or, afterwards, make amends when mistakes are made.
People aren't robots. We all have feelings, emotions, biases, etc. But when you're in a leadership position in ANYTHING - whether it's as a trainer in a corporate restaurant like I am now or as an administrator on a text-based game - it is absolutely imperative that you try to put that shit aside for the greater good if you want what you're a leader of to remain healthy.
If you take the time to read some of the shit on this board, you'll realize that maybe some people in positions of leadership have fallen short of that. Which is unfortunate, especially when the staff isn't willing to admit to, much less correct, their mistakes.
Looking back on over half a 31 year old lifetime of being involved with this game, I definitely have some regrets. But at same time, I feel like others and I have felt the brunt of OOC failures in staff leadership.. and, like I've written before, the traffic this board has seen seems like a symptom of that.
It's pretty tragic, but, Jesus, I'm old enough to know that the unfairness of life extends well beyond a text based role playing game.
Just don't say it is and always has been fair/100% objective when that simply ain't the case.
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Post by sirra on Mar 14, 2017 22:42:41 GMT -5
I would love to hear your thoughts on that era. I was not around for it, and this thread is as much a history lesson as it is a place where special snowflakes can cry about my "hate speech" being "problematic in tone". Just skimming through the thread and thought I'd respond to this (without having read anything ahead of it, so excuse that.) First things first, they announced Armageddon Reborn out of nowhere at a time when the game was actually doing pretty well. They tried to pass it off as an attempt at avoiding prosecution for using the Dark Sun IP, which somebody (Sanvean? Adhira? Some female admin) insinuated was coming because of some stupid post Delerak made on the Wizards of the Coast forum. Anyway, it wasn't very believable. I don't think anybody seriously bought the idea that Arm Reborn was a necessary evil. Whatever the case, it came suddenly out of the blue at a time when the game didn't need it particularly badly. The game had certainly begun the decline that we've witnessed for the past decade, but it was by no means in a dire state -- for instance, this was the time when the Guild was bustling under Gin. Hardly a dying game in desperate need of re-branding in order to stay alive. Things were going pretty well. Regardless, staff dropped the Reborn bomb without warning. They hilariously projected a six month development time, and a lot of people were optimistic and looked forward to a whole new game with new ideas and (probably the main draw) modernized code. Players praised this idea as exciting and long overdue, which is fair enough, but some were also skeptical of both the motives behind the decision and the absurdly ambitious six months promise. However, since it sounded potentially cool, most were probably willing to look past the motives if it led to a whole new, modernized Armageddon, so it was generally embraced and met little to no opposition. Since the Armageddon that we knew and loved was going away very soon (lol), staff promised to loosen restrictions on special apps and character demographics. In short, they approved pretty much all spec apps indiscriminately and disregarded the existing numbers of such characters. The result was an unbelievable tidal wave of spec-app characters. Mages, muls, mindbenders, you name it. I'm not joking when I say probably ten psionicists were operating within Allanak during this time; three of them concurrently in the same clan. I knew a one-karma player who got a psionicist. They'd started playing less than a year ago and was now behind the wheel of probably the most exclusive, unique and powerful type of character in the game. And so were probably over a dozen other players, not a single one of whom was not normally considered experienced or trustworthy enough to play such a character. Needless to say, this basically destroyed the game. Plots would never get off the ground because there were so many mindbenders working for just about everybody that secrets were just no longer a thing. You had literally daily occurences of magic even as a regular nobody; it was an ordinary sight to see somebody pulled off their barstool with Hands of Wind, or watch people dashing around the desert with glowing orbs swirling around them. There were so many elementalists that people gradually stopped roleplaying the fear of magic. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of gemmed characters almost rivaled that of non-gemmed in Allanak. Everywhere you went, you encountered some non-mundane shit that made mundane characters feel completely pointless. I played Hekro in the guild at the time, a quite powerful warrior tasked with handling southside business and brute-force stuff around the alleys. Despite being a plateaued warrior whose dealings were sufficient to compel Warlord Kharad Tor attempt to assassinate him in person in the middle of the Bard's Barrel, there was actually nothing for him to really do in the Guild because... the other members were three mindbenders, a Nilazi demon-vampire, two or three ghouls, and an unknown number of mages. There was simply no place for a human warrior in that setup, so he just trolled the bars and bullied citizens. This phenomenon was present in all facets of the game. This was the birth of the Magick Lightshow RPTs that people still talk about from time to time. If you weren't either a supernatural character or in a sponsored role, your character was irrelevant outside of their social interactions. You had no place in any situation that had the potential for real conflict, because the guaranteed presence of numerous mages/benders/sorcs/undead meant that your existence was irrelevant. You were relegated to this token role of socializing and guiding the newbies around. People became increasingly upset with this. Then one day, somebody posted a staff announcement reminding players to heed the documented attitude toward magick and other supernatural elements of the game because staff had noticed that people were growing more and more apathetic toward this. It opened the floodgates for the complaints that had been building up for several months, and people lined up to vent their frustrations with the state of the game. These frustrations were undoubtedly strengthened by the fact that we were something like halfway toward the initial six month projection for Reborn and had seen next to no signs of progress. This particular debacle ended with the Great Karma-Off of 2007 or whenever that was. Somebody vowed to play only mundanes from now on and offered to relinquish their karma as proof, and some admin indulged them. In a beautiful and far too rare example of the GDB community coming together for something actually good, people piled in to offer their karma in a (largely symbolic) effort to get the game back on track. I think staff then promised to make things better and whatnot, but I quit for the first time around then. When I came back like a year later, the magick mania seemed to have died down a little, but it had been replaced by this stifling blanket of palpable apathy. People had started to realize that Reborn was probably not actually happening in the foreseeable future. Many still insisted that it would come, though more and more had lost the belief, and what's worse: pretty much everybody in the game had already had the opportunity to play the most enigmatic, powerful, ambitious character they could think of. They'd all had their crack at muls, psionicists, Nilazi, undead, all that shit; and it had completely robbed the playerbase of their collective ambition. People just didn't care very much about their Fords and Mazdas after having driven a Ferrari for a year.
The rest is basically history. Reborn turned out to be a huge joke that died three steps past the threshold, and while the general comings and goings of players meant that the playerbase more or less moved on from the post-orgy slump of the aforementioned year of magick mayhem, it was now time for Nyr to have a go at ruining the game instead. gloryhound : Well I'll definitely agree Arm 2.0 was a fiasco that was bad for the game, but how do you think it's contributed to the current status of having 0.78% player retention and 30 players active on average? As for it being doomed, I knew it was doomed before it started when they said they were going to incorporate everyone's ideas and try to let everyone contribute. That doomed the thing to development hell before it began. You can't manage a programming porject that way. sirra : Granted, it kicked the crap out of the playerbase, but do you believe it's part of why Arm's actively dying now? To continue responding to questions not aimed at me, I'd say that while the Reborn fiasco played some part in the game's decline, it was less a matter of what happened in-game and more the fact that it set the stage for a new type of staff. This period may have ruined the proverbial magic of the game for a number of players, but it was Nyr's generation of staff who did the real damage. I suppose the Reborn debacle may have caused the rise of the Nyrs and Noted Liar Nergals of the world in a roundabout way through the disillusionment and departures of better staff, but I think people got over the "no new things" policies and the ridiculous abundance of magick, and the game could have recovered and done well if it had been run properly instead of becoming a playground for megalomaniac fucktards. This is a great post for anyone who is seriously concerned about how the game went downhill after the Arm 2.0 announcement, or is even just curious about the history of it all. Thank you, OT, for compiling it. There's so much which came out of it, which really influenced some of the biggest things that players still complain about today, such as how magick is treated, and the often negative views of those who play high karma rolls (such as psionicsts and such). Bolded and enlarged the really salient point. This was a HUGE factor in the game's degradation. And I had pretty much the same reaction to all of it. Except I quit almost right away, but did come back a year later to the same scene. |
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OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257
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Post by OT on Mar 14, 2017 22:55:49 GMT -5
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. Sorry for grumbling up the page a bit (and answering more questions directed at somebody else), but here's my take on it: Back around 2008-10ish, things were starting to visibly sour. Because they realized that Reborn was a stillborn joke, more players were beginning to complain about some of the many ridiculous aspects of the code, the increasingly stagnant roleplaying environment, the first real signs of terrible staffing, and the fact that staff put less and less visible work into the game. Instead of listening to any of this criticism, the staff - now increasingly influenced by Nyr and his ilk, and without the passion of people like Halaster and Sanvean - took it personally and began to hate the playerbase for bringing up problems that staff created (or failed to fix when they should/could have.) So, instead of trying to address the concerns of the playerbase, they began to loathe the playerbase for having those concerns. This manifested primarily in two ways: a disinclination to help players do what they wanted to do, and an increasingly hostile tone on the forums and mails/requests. Nyr in particular is notorious for the latter, but he wasn't the only one, just the worst of them. Players who complained became regarded as problem players who should be punished for spreading negativity. This amplified the frustration of those players, and while I don't think this forum was deliberately created to discuss the problematic staff, it naturally became the place to go for anyone who wanted to talk or read about the seemingly ever-growing list of things that were taboo on the GDB. That really accelerated the issue. Things came out in the open, and people who had their own grievances realized that there was a place to bring them into the light whereas it used to be impossible to do on the GDB, and risky to do even on AIM because you never knew if the guy you were talking to would turn around and tell staff what you said about them. Suddenly there was an anonymous forum where people talked about all the shitty things staff had done, and an entire community formed around that. In a matter of months, this forum went from a few scraggly posts with skill lists and shit like that to what can almost be called a movement. People discovered that those times staff had treated them like garbage for no good reason were not in fact isolated incidents to be embarrassed about but rather a widespread, deep-seated problem that affected dozens upon dozens of players. There's a reason no other RPI has a forum committed to this, and that's because Armageddon had grown to be singularly corrupt and degenerate. The game was getting worse year by year in such a tangible, obvious way that people had this burning need to discuss it and share their disappointment. It shows both how much people cared about this game and how bad it had gotten. With their refusal to acknowledge basically any problem in the game, staff really had no way to deal with this. They couldn't have gone "good point, let's do something about this" because by that time, the game's leadership just did not consist of the type of people who can do that. Instead they ramped up their hostility to fight back against this growing threat, became even more insecure and defensive and paranoid about their newfound enemies amongst the playerbase, and really just quadrupled what was already there: their lack of respect for the game and the people who play it. Since that's a losing battle - it's not as if people were going to forget those aforementioned grievances just because staff got even more defensive and hostile about it - things just got worse and worse. The shadowboard became public enemy number one, something for them to fight against and attempt to destroy. They began condemning everyone who uses it, then banning everyone they suspected of using it. They have never acknowledged the possibility that an entire community sharing essentially the same story of staff bullshittery might come from a place of truth, and they never will. However, most players are not idiots, so they're not going to buy the staff's staunch denial; what can only be called their unwavering insistence that they're all blameless and there's a gigantic conspiracy to bring down the game (I have to conclude that this is their stance since all of their behaviour points to that.) So, over the last several years, more and more people realized that not only is it true that the game has been driven into the ground by incompetent, despicable individuals on staff, but the game's administration is both refusing to do anything about this and actively hunting down the people who have been wronged and had the audacity to tell others about it. It's kind of like a marriage where one spouse has been beating the other for years, and then the victim finally joins a support group and the other reacts with astonished indignation and decides to attack the support group as an anti-marriage community. It's so profoundly despicable, and really baffling on a fundamental human level. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2017 22:55:50 GMT -5
Leaders never, ever, ever like admitting when they're wrong. No leaders anywhere. It makes them, well, look like bad leaders.
No one who is a leadership position... wants to look like a bad leader. Or a weak leader. It's a pretty simple concept, really.
But when shit like that becomes a pattern, and the leaders attempt to aggressively silence those who point out errors/failures/shortcomings/whatever, then, well, those who feel the brunt of it are left with the decision to move on with their lives or try to resolve the issues.
Personally, I've mostly moved on with my life, but I appreciate those still actively working to get the kinks worked out.
If anything, maybe the end result of that will be to spare others the hurt feelings that many who post here were left with over a game that, at some point in their life at least, they were authentically captivated by and genuinely loved.
I feel as though a big part of my childhood is tied up with ArmageddonMUD, which is maybe a big reason why I still read this board and, infrequently, the GDB. It's hard to forget about it entirely, and, really, I just wish we could wave a magic wand and all get along again.
That ain't the way the world works, though... pride and spite will trump a willingness to make amends 9/10 times, and being on staff doesn't instantly make a person exempt from that or other issues related to maintaining a healthy community.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2017 23:08:05 GMT -5
Very well said, OT.
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my2sids
Displaced Tuluki
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Post by my2sids on Mar 14, 2017 23:27:47 GMT -5
Leaders never, ever, ever like admitting when they're wrong. No leaders anywhere. It makes them, well, look like bad leaders. Disagree fundamentally with this statement. |
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OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257
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Post by OT on Mar 14, 2017 23:41:00 GMT -5
It's probably fair to say that leaders never like admitting that they're wrong, but there are plenty of good leaders who will know when they're wrong and do the right thing in response.
Just not on ArmageddonMUD.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2017 1:08:03 GMT -5
Leaders never, ever, ever like admitting when they're wrong. No leaders anywhere. It makes them, well, look like bad leaders. Disagree fundamentally with this statement. I could have worded it better. I mean, someone in a position of leadership might *fear* being *perceived* as weak, wishy-washy, unstable, unreliable... etc... if they change their stance on an issue or are faced with the prospect of admitting an error. If you're a leader and you fuck up, there tends to be at least the CHANCE of undesirable ramifications - and people are watching. It's a thing. Nyr was not the apologetic type. Myself and others have written about how we tried corresponding with him and making peace, only to be responded to with snark and condescension. I mean, come on. And that marked lack of diplomacy, especially when people start putting it together that they've felt it too, well, it might be the easy - or funny, or what seems to you to be the just thing to do - but, in the end, attitudes and behaviors like that only really damage the whole of the community in the end. There are lots of people who have issues being genuinely kind to others, and, while I'm not saying that all leaders must be nice/push overs/kind to everyone, all the time, I believe that the BEST leaders will, for the good of the community/groups they serve, at least be judicious about how they treat others. FWIW, I loved naephet. He was one of my absolute most favorite imms, and, maybe sometime I'll take the time to write about how he tried to form a Merchant's Accord between all the houses... using my character Cidsarl Kadius as a force behind this, only to be foiled when Pearl fucked it all up by revealing to Cidsarl's prospective partner/future bride in all this, Kavindra Nenyuk, that he'd been cheating on her. With Pearl. She was smart, and, to be sure, I think Clegane's crippled Borsail noble had a lot to do with helping Pearl get to where she needed to be and do what she did. Every week, back then, I would take orders of items people wanted. No matter what the item, within reason. And, without fail, Naephet would write up the item and implement it into the game. Like mastercraft, except all you had to do was come up with a description. Also, to be sure, I also spent a lot of time in the Tan Muark while simultaneously doing stuff like chatting on the ancient Arm IRC channel, which didn't really matter as much as this board does. Most of the group hatred back then was directed at people like myself, who did shit like play gypsies, and probably the only reason I was invited to that and other roles was because I was *completely, totally* oblivious to the combat code of the game and, yes, did more tavern sitting and role playing than I did killing things or playing combat characters... whereas the people who had been around way longer were used to the code and the attractive PK element of the game. PK'ing MUDs back then were a thing, and there were lots of, for instance, God Wars MUDs that focused entirely on playerkilling. but if you were a player whose style was influenced by that genre or if you otherwise focused on combat, well, you didn't get asked to play in clans or roles like that. I was only 14-17 during that era, so a lot of the bitterness at the exclusivity was lost on me at the time. Now that I'm about twice as old - especially after going through this whole shitshow with Nyr - I "get" why many people felt the way they did. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2017 1:18:40 GMT -5
One thing that I think hurts the game is the fact that the arbitrary and subjective nature of the karma system is total bullshit.
Admittedly, I think the pursuit of rewards like karma helped the younger me really strive to do his absolute best to be a "good" player in every sense of the word... but, even though there are now structured rules for karma, well it is still bullshit.
As long as people aren't fucking shit up in the game world, they should be able to play whatever they want at least every so often.
What is personal and goes down OOCly should have no ramifications on what kind of characters, races, classes, etc that you're allowed to play.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2017 1:41:55 GMT -5
emote strains, veins bulging from his neck, as he tries to refrain from triple posting
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 15, 2017 2:15:11 GMT -5
Then let me triple post for you. Fuck Armageddon, fuck jacarter and fuck, just, near everything... if you haven't read the log, please do not, it's enough to make you have a stroke.
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 15, 2017 2:26:46 GMT -5
Also, yes, if only to infuriate BfB could you explain in exrtutiating detail what happened to you? I swear BfB's gonna rip my head off.
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Mar 15, 2017 2:30:39 GMT -5
BfB is secretely Vanth, and is trying to kill you, you options are west east south northwest up and down the shitter.
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Post by jcarter on Mar 15, 2017 8:15:36 GMT -5
the arm reborn fiasco was downright ridiculous. people knew it was bullshit from a mile away. a brief history, for those who don't know. arm reborn was announced in 2006. i can't find the original announcement post (please oh please someone find it) but i also recall them mentioning some absurdly small timeline that everyone knew wasn't feasible. but you still had people like morgenes that should have known better going nope just you wait and see! of course, they missed the date. but there were updates! discussions and great new ideas that every imm has which they spent time making sure to update the blog, which shifted locations a couple of times, to hype up their ideas. there would be cat people, but not cat people like you would expect, and shaloooonsh even played one in Arm 1.0 as a dragonsthrall. there was a player-staff meeting in an Arm 2 chat room! look guys we're for reals! people were posting ideas and omg wouldn't this be cool? then time wore on. all these great ideas started petering out. in 2010, staff shut down the Arm 2.0 forum because they felt that no further discussion or ideas were necessary, lol. apparently having a forum that staff did not bother lookign at was just not an acceptable option and things needed to be locked down. that arm 2 forum has been hidden now, probably out of shame. at this time people had pretty much just started rolling their eyes whenever arm 2 came up. and yet staff STILL persisted that no way, arm 2 is happening it's not scrapped!!! in 2012, adhira crawled out of her nest to announce that it wasn't happening. according to anaiah and a couple others here, arm 2 was barebones garbage despite 6 years of development. players had suspected this for quite some time, but it felt nice to finally be vindicated. if by now players hadn't realized staff were full of shit, it was when this announcement was posted. staff could be in a burning building and players could yell 'hey that building is on fire get out!' and they would say 'no no everything is just fine!'. and here we are in 2017. playing a video game that was originally developed by a 13 year old child in 1993. |
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