mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Jun 20, 2018 9:51:32 GMT -5
Except what makes someone a good or bad person is very relevant to Armageddon's staff team.
The staff you listed put a lot of time into the game. Love them or hate them, they decided something was the last straw and that it was better to bow out and let someone better take over. The fact that someone better didn't come is just a reflection of the community. You're listing last straws as if they're legacies.
But that's just it: Armageddon is a game. It is not a community, or a family, or a job, though it tries very hard to appear to be those things. There is no ethical or moral quandary regarding abandoning it, and it is perfectly fine to come here and voice opinions about the game.
Armageddon's staff is not known for being reflective. What they are known for is being self-serving. If they want to correct that image, they can stop fucking serving themselves and focus on doing the job they volunteered for. I do not expect this to actually happen.
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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Jun 20, 2018 10:03:59 GMT -5
I was being half-sarcastic. I mentioned the possibility of that in the Discord channel yesterday. Still, if the staff made ramihr whole, but included deleting the previous complaints as a condition, then the effort is 100% intended to cover their own asses. It just so happens that doing the right thing happened to intersect with staff's desires here. Let's not pretend that the staff are altruistic. Altruism, well. I think lots of the current admins are relatively new to their positions, and, in the grand scheme of things, compared to some of us, maybe even newish to the game, too. I am not trying to be an apologist entirely, but I feel like, at least when Sanvean and Halaster were in charge, they were more willing to help people and not so strictly adhere to rules for rules sake, like with Rami. They also made their own mistakes, and people vehemently railed against the gypsies, far more than the Plainsman... I remember being on IRC, playing a gypsy, as people trash talked them and favoritism and this and that. I was 15, maybe, at the time, so I didn't fully "get" why they were so mad. Nyr was huge on "fair for everyone, no more favorites" on the surface. It was a sham: he had his own clique, just like Sanvean, so doing away with the Tan Muark to strike out at perceived previous unfairness (the staff's dialogue reflected this, too, on the GDB, but I'm not going to hunt those quotes down) was poor leadership. I don't want gushing altruism from the people who run the game. I want, if someone thinks something is severely wrong, to at least listen.... And I you've already said what you think about that, so maybe it is just a naive hope, but I don't think so, not entirely. Anyway, it's good to write and think out loud about these kinds of things, especially in an adult way. And maybe it's beneficial, too. Because people *are* listening, despite Nergal's comments about these forums. |
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Post by jcarter on Jun 20, 2018 11:09:16 GMT -5
Regardless of how you view a person, mehtastic, the simple fact is that most of the prominent staffers just go away when they fuck up. Bhag caught shit for using his OOC high-immship (I forget what they were called in those days, rank above storyteller, maybe not quite Highlord), and he was gone. Halaster caught shit for the whole Plainsman thing, vanishes. Sanvean's Arm 2.0 was a bust, and she was gone. Noted Liar Noted Liar Nergal had his necker/I dunno what thing, and, again, gone. Edit: Almost forgot about Nyr. Shit came to light, and, instead of making things right, he just left. Too many admins and players fuck up in very real ways... and just leave. For good. I don't want to get into personal details because I, myself, am a rather loathesome human being. I can really be a bad person sometimes, whether we're talking about breaking the law, not being attentive to my family, being a lazy bum, all kinds of shit. Sometimes I feel like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys crossed with the guys from Requiem for a Dream. But I just like it when people don't give up. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Sure, there are plenty of things worth giving up on, and ArmageddonMUD is something I've done that with multiple times over ALMOST 20 years. I think I'm at 18. It's just, I dunno what I'm trying to say, exactly, but I like when people, after failure, don't immediately throw up their hands and walk away. Or maybe, even if they do, they reflect on their mistakes and come back. Again, I don't want to get into particulars about, OOCly, what makes someone a good or bad person, whether within or outide the context of the game, at least not this morning. This is the first I'm hearing about nergals necker. Backstory? |
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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Jun 20, 2018 11:13:34 GMT -5
You remember, right before he quit, there was this huge thing about the Necker word, and he really became militant on the GDB about it?
But like I said in the post, there were other things.
Look at Nergal's post history. Explosions about a couple/few things, then, poof, no more Nergal posts.
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punished ppurg
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Post by punished ppurg on Jun 20, 2018 11:45:43 GMT -5
jcarter He's talking about Nergal's thoughtpolice on necker/necker, and "A lot of you simply disgust me."
And in retrospect, he was right. Look at the thread on the GDB right now. 0 day dwarf came in and pissed in your cornflakes? lol why are you emotionally invested in your character bro, it's just a game :^)
As one of his most vitriolic critics, I have come to understand that Nergal was the Colonel Kurtz of Armageddon. If only we could drop the bomb. If only.
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Post by jcarter on Jun 20, 2018 12:09:23 GMT -5
oh nm, i thought this was referring to some character he had.
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ibusoe
Clueless newb
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Post by ibusoe on Jun 20, 2018 13:51:37 GMT -5
Typical ArmArm Player: Hey, I just got griefed. Here's the log. *Shows the log*
Typical Arm Staffer: Sure, I'll take a look. Matter of fact, let me log on since I'm not logged in. *Looks at the log, logs in checks the run log* Typical Arm Staffer: Yeah, definitely a griefer. That sucks dude, good luck with your next character. Arm Player: Hold up, don't I get a rez? Typical Arm Staffer: Wellllllll, the rules say...*copy and pastes the rules* Also, fill out this TPS report. Arm Player: Why? What's that going to do? There's someone just going around killing people. He's a griefer. That was a thirty five day character, I played every day, established contacts and friends and that all ends because of some asshole? You're not punishing him, you're punishing ME.Typical Arm Staffer: True. We'll take care of that. Have fun starting over. Former Arm Player: I'm done with this game. Typical Arm Staffer: Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Former Arm Player: *posts on the GDB--DELETED* Typical Well meaning GDBer: *Posts a tangental idea that is dumb, gets idea ripped to shreds* Typical Arm Psycho: Tuff. The world is harsh, you could get killed for Blah, blah, blah Bullshit. This isn't a thing that happens all the time. Why should staff care about this? My characters all live to about 5 days played, ten tops. Yeah, I play assholes all the time, but I make things happen. Typical Arm Apologist: One time, my character got killed no emotes, nothing....that sucks dude. Good luck with your next player. Typical Armpologist2: *Makes a Buffy reference* Good luck on your next character. Lizzie: *says something ridiculous. Doesn't matter what, it's ridiculous* Possible Shadowboarder: Hold on guys, let's think about this.... Typical Arm Psycho2: Shut up! I never emote when I PK, does that make me a griefer? No! I have three karma! My RP is great! I make mad plots! *Former Arm Player is long gone. Status quo is maintained. People go back to the "Why are Zalanthans monogamous?" and the "I luv playing magickers... so suck it!" threads* Typical Arm Fan: Hey guyz! Guyz! Player numbers are waaaaay down. Everybody write a good review of the game on these sites *Lists sites for MUD reviews* We need to get new players, so we can take advantage of their noobness. I think you just summed up the GDB, which itself is a metaphor for the game. I'll admit that I probably made a couple of good posts, and I certainly read two or three good posts over the years. And out of my (twenty or so?) characters there were a couple of Bynners and a couple of criminals that I had a right good time with. Most of the time, like 85% we just see a replay of the above. Someone tries to make a cool character, sinks a ton of work into it, staff provide no help at all, and eventually you die to either a code glitch or a griefer. I'll give myself credit because I think I nailed it right here: armageddonmud.boards.net/thread/861/armageddon-mud-root-cause-diagnosis The problem is that we don't have the right team to play the sort of game that we all claim that we want to play. The way that we smooth out the problems, is we eliminate any expectation that you can impact the game, level out the grind hierarchy, remove most of the game aspects that require NSA-level secrecy, and reduce the importance of things like karma. If we set up a game that was effectively a simulation of "World's Deadliest Catch," we'd probably all mostly be happy as long as everyone got a turn at being Captain. By playing Armageddon we're effectively trying to recreate the Byzantine Empire and you have a quarter of the playerbase wanting to play the Captain of the Varangian Guard, a quarter wanting to play Emperor Basil, and a quarter wanting to play Merlin the Wizard. The remaining 25% of the players are pretty much expected to cover all of the remaining red shirt roles. We have like ten people actually interested in playing red shirts, and fifty players that want to play elite characters of various sorts. Most critically we don't have the staff to pull it off. Heck, even if we wanted to recreate Deadwood, we'd get twenty people willing to play red shirts and forty people vying to play Al Swearengen. Even Deadwood would be a stretch for us. We should just admit that we don't have the moxie. Our current grind requires too much of an influx of noobs. Our staffing is terrible. We can't pull it off. Some reasonable constraints: Karma shouldn't buff you up to more than twice the capabilities of a zero-karma character, and you should be able to get all karma within two years. An average player should have all of it within three. Less favoritism. Punishment should be swifter, much more even handed but much more lenient. Accounts should routinely be locked for 24-hours if someone complains. Both accounts - the complainers and the defendants. If that doesn't fix the problem, both players should be told to avoid each other. After that it should be pretty transparent who the problem players are. Very few problems should require anything more sever than a 72-hour lock. Staff censure should be more transparent. Anything your character should want to achieve, should be doable in less than a year. It shouldn't take you more than a year to become mayor of Deadwood. Because you can't have more than one mayor of Deadwood, our game just simply shouldn't have a mayor. City centers should be governed by a set of competing PC captains. A fully maxed character shouldn't take more than 18 months to achieve. A fully maxed, optimized PC shouldn't even be more than 6 times the impact/capability/status of a starter zero-karma PC. In most cases hitting 4-times starting capabilities should be pretty rare. Stats should be mostly irrelevant. Actually five or six more reforms like that should make a game where there would be much, much less OOG conflict and much more IG conflict. Think about it, I can pretty routinely get five people over to my apartment to play settlers of Catan, which is 100% PVP. There really isn't cooperation. I've had arguments over board games, but they're pretty rare. Never had an argument over a board game last 2 hours past the end of the game. If we removed most of the temptations to cheat/spam/grief these problems would simply go away. Understandably that wouldn't precisely create the sort of game that we all really really want to play, but for us to have that we'd have to institute much stricter reforms, and have a juried game. Only like 40% of us would make the cut for that, it's not worth it. |
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faroukel
Displaced Tuluki
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Post by faroukel on Jun 21, 2018 8:28:23 GMT -5
all interesting to read...
I would argue though, that any RPI, is more community than game. Some games have more active discords, than activity in the games themselves.
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Post by pinkerdlu on Jun 21, 2018 9:19:11 GMT -5
all interesting to read... I would argue though, that any RPI, is more community than game. Some games have more active discords, than activity in the games themselves. Yeah, that's an abysmal argument. If the discord for a 'RPI' is more active than the game, that's because the game is dead. Sorry to say, but Armageddon is one of the very few semi-active RPIs left standing (barely). LabMUD, Harshlands, SoI, etc. All dead my man. I don't care if you get 10 players during peak on a Saturday, the discords don't count, those rpis aren't active alternatives. /derail Edit: I get the point that you were making, now. |
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punished ppurg
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Post by punished ppurg on Jun 21, 2018 9:47:07 GMT -5
"RPI is more community than game"
That's the problem. No normal player wants to sit on the gdb and listen to the old guard sniff each others farts. The "community" is a shoddy distraction from the game. I have been under an administrative group that focused more on community than game, and the game suffered immensely. More drama was to be had by dicking around on IRC and the forums than actually playing the game. It leads to a terrible environment, and new players have no reason to stuck around because they aren't being engaged.
There is no argument posed by these idiots. Their words have no substance, no reasonable synthesis can be achieved by dialogue with them. They are almost as bad as the griefers, giving an already comatose staff team an excuse to ignore their shit game design.
"So long as it doesn't happen to me."
You're not a better player because you don't care that your character dies. It's clear they've over the years established Armageddon as an OOC clubhouse, with their cabal of friends, playing the same old-hat gimmicks with the same effortless excuses. Why should they give a fuck if someone else suffers? There's no reason: the chatroom will continue, as long as they are together to keep the circlejerk pumping. Just shameless.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Jun 21, 2018 10:02:22 GMT -5
"RPI is more community than game" That's the problem. No normal player wants to sit on the gdb and listen to the old guard sniff each others farts. The "community" is a shoddy distraction from the game. I have been under an administrative group that focused more on community than game, and the game suffered immensely. More drama was to be had by dicking around on IRC and the forums than actually playing the game. It leads to a terrible environment, and new players have no reason to stuck around because they aren't being engaged. There is no argument posed by these idiots. Their words have no substance, no reasonable synthesis can be achieved by dialogue with them. They are almost as bad as the griefers, giving an already comatose staff team an excuse to ignore their shit game design. "So long as it doesn't happen to me." You're not a better player because you don't care that your character dies. It's clear they've over the years established Armageddon as an OOC clubhouse, with their cabal of friends, playing the same old-hat gimmicks with the same effortless excuses. Why should they give a fuck if someone else suffers? There's no reason: the chatroom will continue, as long as they are together to keep the circlejerk pumping. Just shameless. This exactly. The community is dominated by self-interested people, who aren't interested in improving the game, but winning the game. Some of them, like Lizzie, have been known to be against attracting new players to the game. Your Nergal=Colonel Kurtz comparison is also scarily accurate. |
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Post by lyse on Jun 21, 2018 10:41:38 GMT -5
Purg kinda nailed it. I'd even go so far as to say any true dialogue is completely ignored. I wouldn't even call it a community, I'd call it a random shout box of things. Staff is aware that is what it is and they're pretty powerless to do anything about it. It's not engaging because they really aren't even engaging each other, they're just saying shit. I said a long time ago the RAT being the most active thread was a bad sign because it's an indicator that there's nothing else to talk about. Now their discord is the RAT and it's just as bad because people are just kind of hanging out, posting cat pictures or just saying random randomness. That's alone will scare people of because they're thinking "What's this all about and where do I fit in?"
Nergal, gets a bad rap, not saying he was the greatest Admin. He tried to make changes where he thought the game was wrong. The problem is, what's wrong with the game goes DEEEEEEEEP. He was the first Admin to say "Something's wrong." though
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sneazy
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Post by sneazy on Jun 21, 2018 11:01:15 GMT -5
Would be better as an invite only game. Then imms could do more dungeon master tasks and less coddling dumbasses.
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Post by lyse on Jun 21, 2018 11:42:55 GMT -5
Would be better as an invite only game. Then imms could do more dungeon master tasks and less coddling dumbasses. Probably the best way to start, set the tone, work out the bugs in theme and mechanics and grow it from there. |
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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Jun 21, 2018 11:50:59 GMT -5
Comments interspersed in bold. Except what makes someone a good or bad person is very relevant to Armageddon's staff team. You are right, but I think, in relation to Arm, people will have varying perspectives on what is "good" or "bad"... we lack absolutely objectivety, but kindness is at the root of this. Halaster and Sanvean at least were mostly kind; Nyr was not, for a clear-cut example.The staff you listed put a lot of time into the game. Love them or hate them, they decided something was the last straw and that it was better to bow out and let someone better take over. The fact that someone better didn't come is just a reflection of the community. You're listing last straws as if they're legacies. The fact that someone better didn't come in is, yes, a reflection on the community. But leadership changes people; I've seen it both online and IRL. WHen Nyr was playing his noble in Tuluk before being immed, he was probably sinking lots of time into the game while simultaneously adding to it with plots/player-to-player interactions. Maybe, given his behavior as a player, the producers could not have anticipated what he would eventually grow to become.
And also, last straws maybe isn't quite the best descriptor. Last straw me makes think of when you're pissed, and that ONE THING finally makes you walk away. I believe it was more of a case of embarassment in many sitations, of making huge pushes AS THE MAIN LEADER, only to find that you couldn't provide what you said. See: real life politicians. And that embarasssment/sense of failure, or both, were the ends of legacies. Forgive me for I am being speculative a little at this juncture. But that's just it: Armageddon is a game. It is not a community, or a family, or a job, though it tries very hard to appear to be those things. There is no ethical or moral quandary regarding abandoning it, and it is perfectly fine to come here and voice opinions about the game. I disagree on the community part. I still am friends with people I met 16 years ago, like their Facebook statuses, even though we haven't played or talked about Arm except fleeting in a decade, most cases. For me, there is sort of an ethical quandary to abandoning - or, at least, I feel that way. Even if there had not been all of this strife, I would feel bad about not being attentive to it, at least every now and then. Fuck, I got an English degree and became a teacher, probably, because of Arm. With the parents I had, I doubt that I ever would have become even the so-so writer that I am without the practice Arm provided to me 16-18 years. So, however ill-founded, I do feel some sense of obligation to the game. I mean, maybe I should have picked a better obsession as a 14 year old, like chemistry or astrophysics, but the love of reading/writing Arm instilled is something that - for better or worse - changed the course of my life. Sounds a little melodramatic, but it's the truth.Armageddon's staff is not known for being reflective. What they are known for is being self-serving. If they want to correct that image, they can stop fucking serving themselves and focus on doing the job they volunteered for. I hesitate to classify the staff as an entirety on their reflectivity or lack there of. Obviously, they have reflected on the way they do some things over the past few years, and however loathe they might be it admit it, such reflection undeniably has been spurred from these forums or the ripple effect created by them. Sanvean, who I've met IRL and spoken with OOCly quite a fair amount, was especially reflective, I believe. Obviously, some have reflected and made change as a result of these forums or the "wave efect" rippling out from them.
Self-serving, man. By nature, I feel like most players invest themselves into a game to "win," and, unfortunately, I feel like that doesn't simply vanish when a person takes a position on staff, even after they've been on staff for a long time. Maybe ESPECIALLY after they've been on staff for a long time, given Bhag and Halaster's behavior involving imm avatars who obviously strove for power (while, at least in Halaster's case, often using this desire to have a badass avatar to involve others).
People want others to like them, so they form and feed their cliques; this is how some problems arise, especially given the fact that many Arm players put in a lot of time online and, as such, have lots of online friends, including those from ArmageddonMUD, which may be their "primary" hobby. It goes the same way with enemies or those outside of your friend group; old players, like myself, find themselves on the receiving end of this after most of their friends have moved on to other hobbies. Simply put, we're no longer in the loop, and, at best, we're not as included anymore, or, at worst, maybe someone who didn't like us before NOW IS on staff, with predictable results. See: Vanth.I do not expect this to actually happen. I hope you're wrong like a crackhead hopes there's just one more push in his pipe and keeps lighting it and lighting it, just KNOWING there's ONE MORE HIT IN THERE, MAN.How long did you play Arm, mehtastic? Did I mention that you remind me of an angrier but just-as-sharp BitterFlashBack? You don't hint at your vast knowledge of history of the game, kinda bragging in a way, like posters such as OT/legendary, and you're not quite as well-written as them... but I can still you're a smart dude. I wasn't paying much attention to the drama about the codebase leaking, but I had access to the codebase over a decade ago, as did MANY others, thanks to j0ram, who is now deceased. I haven't looked at the code release, myself, because, as I've said, I'm a big dumb man, and I'm afraid I wouldn't understand most of it, anyway. However, with the codebase release pressing the limit a bit on this, it is ABSOLUTELY undeniable that the staff have tried to make the mechanics of the game more transparent *as a direct result of these fucking forums.* The branch trees that Brokkr so proudly posted (as he shold have been proud for actually coming close as close to completing a major project as anyone has for as long as I can remember) for the new classes NEVER, EVER, EVER would have been included had these forums not arisen to prominence within, yes, this community. Please, I would like to have a face-to-face conversation with an admin to convince me otherwise. It's not perfect, but I think these forums have influenced the game in ways that the imms would perhaps admit ony reluctantly. Sorry for the digressions. |
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