Idle Speculation: Lazy Role Call Edition

you're free to not respond to me at all, that's a-okay. but i'm going to keep continue calling you out on your bullshit either way.

my beef with you is that you're hypocritical and imo a shitty poster. you whine and complain about people attacking your person, while doing the same thing to other people.

you complain about arguments on topic being overshadowed, yet your first repsonse in this thread was a dismissive point to a poster without arguing his point.

you bitch about people generalizing about staff, while generalizing "this community" (your words) based on whatever strawman you feel like arguing. and now you have some mental gymnastics about how *your* generalizations are different and should be excused.

you complain about people asking for your sources, while you ask for other people's proof and data.

you admittedly came here to talk shit. you bragged about it and have mentioned it multiple times, and I've pointed out exactly where previously. you have, of course, conveniently ignored all those times. when it gets turned around back on you though, you want to play 'ho hum i just want to discuss the topics'.

treat other people how you want to be treated. i really don't care whether or not you disagree with people about a fantasy video game and how nerds do a good or bad job of staffing it. but what i do take issue with is your repeated attempts at stirring things up and high horse position you try to take after slinging around mud with the rest of the pigs. unfuck yourself and treat others with the respect you want, otherwise stop posting about how poor little you is being unfairly attacked for just trying to have a discussion.

I have no idea, still, what the meta-plot is. Was. I can't see who it has effected or what it has changed in the gameworld. From my perspective - complete dud.

A dozen players gave up their PC's autonomy and final destiny into the hands of staff for what? Shouldn't it have made a ripple? Somewhere?

Out of those that can be mentioned without ruining people's plots.

Ann, the byn sergeant soccumbed to Nilaz. It took a lot of very impressive RP. She became a nilazi elementalist, but due to various machinations was eventually captured by templarate

There are other things happening. Some gicks got new spells. It all depends on their reaction and behaviour. There are others who are being enticed by nilaz and other things to various degrees, depending on people's reactions.

Obviously, that SLK defiler rumor is complete BS.

It's because honestly, at the end of the day, metaplot stuff can only really be a supplement to the meat and potatoes of an RPI. If you put in, say, 20 hours a week, you can't expect more than a few of those hours to revolve around some metaplot--and that's if you're one of the "Chosen Few." For everyone else, there's likely nothing but that outside view. Either way, the game needs to sustain itself on everyday roleplay, on meaningful activities and interactions, and Armageddon has largely lost this. The game has been culled down so much, both geographically and ideologically, that the everyday roleplay is lacking.

This kind of medium is just not great for storytelling, so to some extent, I can excuse a lapse of staff-run plots. It's really fucking hard to come up with a story, run it for x number of autonomous players, and get a result that was objectively good. It's sort of the same reason that quests in WoW are a terrible way to tell stories--you can vaguely present a segment of the setting's history this way, but it just doesn't mesh with the way that the game is actually played. Even the most medicore B-movie is a better storytelling experience.

However, where Armageddon has failed is in providing the foundation for the everyday roleplay that is required in order for the limitations of staff-storytelling to be satisfactory. If you have loads of things going on for your character, it's okay when the latest official scripted plot is a bit of a shrugworthy affair. Unfortunately, the game in recent years has not allowed for loads of things to be going on for most characters because staff have become increasingly control-hungry and insist on interfering with (read: shutting down) anything unusual that players try to do.

Let's take an example: back in like 2003 or something, a PC templar was cast out of the Templarate and sought refuge with the Guild. They pondered what to do with him, and the Guild boss had a secret plan to use the templar to learn literacy. They harbored him as a fugitive for a time until it was found out, and the Templarate put enough heat on the Guild to where they decided that killing the templar was the safest course of action. So ended the story of whatever the fuck his name was, and all players involved had a highly unique and memorable experience.

In today's Armageddon, that templar would just have been force-stored upon doing whatever got him cast out. That's the kind of thing that's wrong. Nothing interesting is allowed to happen organically. Staff is so worried about what players do that they don't let players do enough, and the end result is a forgettable snoozefest where everyone sits in their apartments or clanhalls waiting for something to trickle down from above, because they've learned that players themselves can't really make anything interesting happen. It's a shame, but it's also very obvious and painfully preventable.

Sometimes. When the staff needs to add new content, they have a choice. They can simply add/make the change and tell the playerbase that they must act as if it was always like that. This worked grrrrrrrrrrrreaaaaat with the magician subguild changes. The outcry that there was a lack of roleplay plot that caused the changes echoed throughout the playerbase.

The other choice is to plot it out and introduce the changes organically. Sometimes it's viable to do it via mundane plots that are part of regular going ons. So often the players can in majority choose not to involve themselves in and relate to the events much like one would to a passing story in a news paper. Or somehow involve themselves in.

Sometimes the changes are such, that they have to be part of a magickal plot. But instead of a fireworks show, the staff decided to introduce the changes gradually and let the players play with the developments, new toys, discover stuff, twist their own plots, etc.

Will the end result still end with the new changes rolling in? Sure. They were already coded, written, built, etc. They might be small alterations, that echo somehow in playerbase due to actions, but majority it will remain unchanged.

Please consider that often the negative part about the game is the intense desire to find something negative.


If the new content gets added without any plots then people complain about changes not being rped out.
If people who would otherwise be left out, are gently ushered to participate in the plot, folks cry favoritism.
People who spend their days as indie hunters, playing single player game, tend to complain that there are no plots going on that they can participate in.
Other people take breaks in the game after a death, because their play was so intense and busy with all that stuff that thjey need a little rest.

Couldn't say.

In the population area where I was at there were two staff-initiated zone echoes, a curious plot-item added to a single room, and then the handful of PCs who might have known what was going on all fled to lock themselves away together in non-public access rooms.

I don't believe the local rumor board was updated and I saw no other staff activity available to the common pc during my four hour attendance. YMMV.