An Actual Open Discussion On The Culture Killing Armageddon

Let's see how things are going over on the alt-shadowboard, anyways.

"I refused to read most of what people were saying, but feel perfectly safe passing judgement over it." As much as I'd like to rail on him for this, I think it's probably better if he doesn't read the posts. He's an emotionally delicate man-child who had a meltdown in the first couple pages of the thread at just the hint of a possibility that mommy and daddy were fighting.

I can't think of a reason to play Arm either.

Your feelings are an idiot. People have been very clear about what they want from the staff, and dismissing them as just being miserable people avoids the bigger issue. If the game is healthy why is is so rare for anyone new who has no social investment in the other players to keep playing it? The retention rate of ArmageddonMUD, based on 4.5 years of staff-released date and nearly 10,000 new accounts is Arm used to retain 0.78% of new players before the last 3 years of declining numbers.

Oh, but it is unfair of me to ask you a question without answering yours, so I will do so directly and with no ambiguity.

What I would like would be for the staff to realize that, as this is a MUD and not a tabletop game, they are not responsible for generating most of the activity that happens in the game. I would like them to take this further and realize that trying to be the gatekeepers of activity in such a game is a mistake, to admit to that mistake, and to change their policy towards how they run the game. They should step out of the way of people playing the game by the public rules (rather than the private, fleeting staff whims) and change their role to one where most of what they do is enable role playing and maintain role playing quality rather than writing plots and casting actors for them. It's far less work than what they're doing now and vastly more effective.

The staff should be sparking activity, not treating players like logs to toss on a fire.

Interesting topic tangentially-related to this one: Staff don't actually keep track of their moderation. There's no record of what a post was before it got changed/deleted or any official record a staffer did anything unless they announce it. Your words go down the memory hole and, if you complain, Nergal points to the ashes and says, "They look the same as rule breaking words that were erased, so they must have been rule breaking too."

Notice that no effort was made at the time of the infraction to explain to Bahliker what s/he had done wrong or why. Peasants aren't owed anything from their betters. Their status in the role playing game club isn't high enough to merit it.

Those are dangerous insights you're sharing about nuspeak, Syme. I won't be surprised when your name vanishes from the chess roster.

People have unambiguously stated those things. It's not an assumption on your part. Are you phrasing things this way to cause people to leap to the conclusion you disagree with them, for fear the staff will mistake you for an unbeliever and look unfavorably upon you? Because I can't think of any other uninsulting reason for having to couch explicit remarks as things you assume people may believe. (Though I actually suspect I guessed right and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt as being someone afraid of getting a world response and karma knocked down.)

A better, and simpler solution would be to make all interactions between players and staff public. Likewise, make all staff actions on players (whether positive or negative) public, along with the background and reasoning for them. These things should be kept on the site but be open to reference and discussion on the GDB alt-shadowboard.

The bullshit excuse from staff for not doing this is fear of embarrassing players. That falls apart when you realize the vast majority of player interactions happen between players who don't know who is playing which character. The real reason for keeping these things private is to shelter staffers from public scrutiny for their behavior.

Does anyone really believe that if someone threw a fit in the request tool over not getting to play a role they didn't have the karma for, people would leave the game over staff unfairness? Are players a perk-seeking hivemind that can only be made to follow the rules by being kept in the dark about the rules being enforced even-handedly by polite administrators?

It's a shame Yam didn't go into more detail as to what the problem culture was.

Examples: making your own fun; succeeding without staff; choosing to murder, betray, or corrupt someone (particularly a sponsored role) without advance permission from a staffer; or making a group too popular.

He omitted the incredible number of new players that left. Did they get upset over veterans not having veteran perks, too?

Well shit, broken clock, you're right. You're only missing two things.
1. The people who got abused into leaving or kicked out were the ones who thoroughly enjoyed doing those things on their own.
2. Arm isn't retaining new people who thoroughly enjoy doing those things on their own.

The more driven the individualist role player, the less willing they'll be to suffer Arm's cliquey retard dominated culture.

Do you all get what I mean by cliquey retard now? "How do you lure people back who want to do things by their own drive and effort? FREE PERKS FOR FAVORED PLAYERS."

... well fuck. They do have some skilled trolls over there.

That won't work for reasons mentioned earlier with staff moderation, and because (to quote Nergal) not everything that gets moderated broke rules. Who in their right mind would make the mistake in participating in that subforum twice?



How would a player give the full context when you just told that same player not to share the log and, come to think of it, don't allow that kind of thing in the first place?

Hopefully no one reading this from over there just had their head explode from cognitive dissonance.

I will limit myself to a single criticism, as you are new, and time will tell if you're worthy of respect or contempt. You've repeated a lot of feelings but have dismissed the possibility of a solution.

The thread's chief offender of committing vague contrary remarks is Nergal. Maybe you should address that to him.



... but your senpai, Nergal, just rejected players sharing logs.

There is no value in defending yourself from nitpickers. Their complaints are the worthless chaff of discussions. Nobody in their right mind mistakes those remarks as valuable.

While you were skipping pages of posts, you must have missed a lot of his.

No comment.

Voice chat wouldn't have a record. Staff would probably love that as a non-solution, if it didn't mean people could hear the disdain in their voices for being challenged.

Because you've mistaken Lizzie for someone genuinely engaging you in conversation. She's a contrarian, who is changing the subject from what should be discussed to something else. You're on the wrong Armageddon forum for an honest disagreement.

::mic drop::