Idle Speculation: Lazy Role Call Edition

It seems more like an effort to draw players with old characters into situations where those characters can die, or be rendered into a state where storage is preferable to continued play. I don't have an issue with a storytelling effort; rather, the apparent lengths staff are going to shower attention to a chosen few in a way that seems more like a voluntary purge than anything actually good.

Beyond that I'm also willing to reserve judgment until I hear about what happens, although I just don't care very much.

They got the camp in 'exact' way Red Fangs gained their camp.

Two players, simply began to consistantly plant tents in a spot in the canyons of waste and brought other Red Fang there, before SLK could snipe them off. The average lifespan of an RF those days was less then a day. Often due to death to SLK.

They did it enough so that when the original characters died, other RF began doing it as well. The non coded, tent based camp existed for probably 4-5 months. Until finally staff chose to start coding stuff in.

RF were all 1 karma characters. No sorcerers, or whatever.

You seem to be glossing over an immmense amount of work and downgrade it to "Oh. They've got karma".

I do think it is difficult to build these bases. Mainly as a preventative measure of playerbase dissolution. In which case it made sense to build an RF Camp, since it only brought playerbase together. It also made sense to build Hasan's camp, because a large chunk of players were playing together, regardless of the camp's existence, or absence of it. At that point lack of quit room was a greater factor in playerbase dissolution, then its existence.

Some of it does have to do with Staff opinion. You can call it favoritism. But I personally find it understandable if a staffer is 'not' interested in interacting greatly with a group of people who are 90% training, 2% socializing, 3% character development and 5% mudsexing. Or groups who 'were' actually pretty fun and interesting, but then ended up wiping out entire npc tribes and then electing to 'ignore' the world's reactions to those deeds.

Placing camps 'unfortunately' tends to shift the power dynamic of the world. It shouldnt. I mean, a camp is a freaking rest spot. But it does. And I'd find it understandable if staffers elected not to put too many of those in, over groups that could cease to exist by the end of the day that the staffer began writing shit up.

All in all. My point here is that 'high karma' is not the biggest factor that influences whether the group gets their camps placed, or greater staff interaction. Higher Karma roles 'do' tend to be observed more often and that does result in interaction. That is true. But often that interaction is less then positive. Ment to keep highly powerful roles bound within the power structure of Zalanthas.

The greater factor that increases odds of staff interaction is stuff like player involving plots, content creation, constructive narration, interesting interactivity. If a Staffer loves logging in to monitor this, or that group there is definitely a difference. Compared to a staffer setting a monitor, watching the training for awhile, and then switching their attention to another clan they're imming over.

1) Gypsies were terrible for Armageddon because the clan, as a whole and as individuals, was sheltered from any consequences in a way that others weren't. Even though they were a tribe with no clear source of power, everyone had to tolerate them because they were the pet project of a staffer. At worst they were temporarily barred from the city until the gypsies could negotiate something. This gave the individuals a great amount of leeway compounded further by a fear of hassling the wrong Gypsy and making enemies of a staffpet.

2) The actual transmission of the volcano was executed terribly. Not only the idea that it just got teleported there without ashing huge sections of Allanak and the scrublands, and the aftermath in not really showing the consequences on the surrounding land, but the spy plot leading up to it. That spy plot was a secret role call just like the recent one and is one of the best examples of when secret role calls are terrible.

3) I'm pretty sure that the current secret role call is to have your character get taken over by an NPC psionicist that makes you do stuff to further the ongoing metaplot. I doubt that this will be secret like the volcano secret rolecall. In fact, this will probably be very public and messy.

4) Re: Staff favorites, some people RP for a short amount of time and get tons of attention, and others RP for years and get nothing at all or get explicitly told to stop RPing their character that way. I think that's the major gripe people have. It could be caused by a staffer's ability (or lack thereof) as an individual to accomplish things, but even with such a favorable explanation as that, it still falls on the Producers to intervene in faltering spheres and try to achieve consistency.

I feel this way, too.

As far as criticism goes after the fact, well, whatever happens, people will have something to say.  You can literally poke holes in anything and everything, and, considering the uhh diversity we see in the players, people will seldom ever be able to agree if something sucks, is mediocre, or awesome.

We can see that efforts have been made to change the game codedly in ways that, I'm sure, even the most veteran of players never, ever anticipated.
 
Six months ago, had you asked if me I believed the staff would implement an entirely new class system, I would have doubted it, just because of things like Arm 2.0 fizzling out.  When I learned that the new classes were already open for play, I was genuinely surprised.

But you know what?  They did it in a way that will certainly require some tweaking along the way, but in a way that that has caused my mind to swim with possibilities for new character concepts that aren't magick-involved.


I believe that, after you've played a long time, the previous mundane guilds just became kinda stale, especially when aware of how many magicker-primary classes were running around.  Changing the game in such a way that the stories or large plots might have non-magickers at the center will, I think, will help a lot with those not having high karma might have more of a chance to feel involved, involve others, and, generally, have the potential to not be overshadowed by uber-sorcs, etc, in terms of what they can do/build/plan.  One backsliding in all of this is the removal of custom crafting; I understand the staff workload aspect of this, but I feel like there are ways to divide staff between those who have access to the whole boatload of stuff staff
side (pfiles, plot specific forums, sekrit stuff) and maybe players who could just be able (how, I don't know, I'm not a web designer or coder) to act as builders for custom craftable objects or other building projects.  When I first started teaching at a college, I volunteered to do something like this to Morgenes but only if there was a way to manage such without actually being exposed to IC information.


I also like how they've been receptive when it comes to feedback regarding to subclasses/extended subclasses, like when mansa made the spreadsheet about subclasses and Brokkr ran with it, and I think that they should not stop themselves short, despite work that has already been put in; more subclasses and even main classes shouldn't be off the table yet.

Anyway, I've digressed a lot to say that hopefully the class/subclass changes will further enable stories to be told in a manner which extends beyond isolated, magick-involved groups.


Imagine if sections of the playerbase and staff had invested time towards the mundane side of the game than isolated, high karma shit.  Well, the game has recently and rapidly developed in a way to make such more feasible, but it might take some time for staff to learn how to augment and support mundane guilds as they move away from a hefty chunk of the karma'd PBase playing magick-primary PCs.

You have less of a chance to tell a story involving many PCs or retaining new players when many of the best players in the game are off fucking around with their maxed Nilazis, sorcs, minions, etc, being unable to enter the place where most of the newbies are.

Right, which is a Great Thing for the game for lots of reasons touched on in this thread.


The karma regeneration helps, too.  People can't play back-to-back mages.  Along with the closing of Tuluk, hopefully this will result in longtime players being in contact with newbies more frequently, and one hopes this will increase player retention rates.