View Single Post
Old 11-11-2017, 09:27 AM   #4
shevegen
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 63
shevegen is on a distinguished road
Re: Armageddon: A well-coded game with a toxic and stagnant community and setting

> If you join this game, expect to play for a long time before
> you are involved in anything more complex than tavern roleplay
> and sparring.

Again, this depends on the player involved. I am sure that even
on Armageddon, you can find people who can adjust really easily
so, whereas others struggle. Even new people who manage to adjust.

It happens on every game, really.

> And if you die, expect to start all over again.

A general problem of perma-death games. I don't like perma-death
in practice in regards to gameplay. I understand that it makes
for some kind of ... more intense atmosphere, since you have to
keep in mind that mistakes can cost your characters. But I feel
that it is much easier to just play a game without having to
worry all the time about who gun-nukes your character.

> A significant portion of the community completely ignores
> standards regarding out-of-character communication about
> in-character events. This is one of those things that's
> meant to maintain the mystery of the game. Cliques of
> players openly discuss in-character events, spread rumors
> about unpopular characters, coordinate out-of-game to
> screw over or kill characters they dislike, and more.

To some extent this also happened on Xyllomer and GEAS.

Not all parts, for example. Cliques played almost no real part
in GEAS for example.

The OOC discussions, though, yep, sounds familiar. Some players
have an obsession with OOC. Usually it's players who have no
interested in RPI/roleplay and are incompetent roleplayers.

But as always, it depends on admin to deal with this and as
long as an admin is not willing to permaban people who use
OOC to disrupt gameplay, so long will this continue.

Cliques are also annoying but you can group punish them. But
again, if an admin is inactive, then you can not do much,
and to me, these problems were never the primary ones. I
think the biggest factor to ruining a game simply is by
ruining the game code - mixed with a small or dwindling
playerbase. That can literally and easily kill EVERY game.
Whereas, even in the above problems and even IF you include
multiplaying cheaters, it's still better to have other players
rather than to have ... no other players. Not that I am in
any way advocating ANY of the above, mind you. I just think
it is a problem that happens on the second row rather than
the first row.

> It's horrifyingly easy to become a member of one of these
> cliques: just talk to someone that you think is in one
> and pretend to be an asshole, and you'll get a Discord
> invite or Skype handle quickly enough.

I played MUDs past 2008 without any OOC communication.

Reason was simple: I did not want to be unfair to any other
player in the first place.

So when you claim the above to be the case, I doubt it still.
Not everyone will go the clique-route or cheats in other
ways. There are also non-clique OOC connections possible
by the way. Admittedly these are rare, since "friends who
know each other OOCly, will be more likely to be friends
in a game" too, I understand this.

> As of now, staff do nothing about these cliques, and are
> seemingly resigned to accepting that they exist.

Yeah. Similar situation on Xyllomer and GEAS to some extent.

Although on the latter, cliques never were the primary problem
really. Most problems that GEAS had in regards to cliques
were players coming from Xyllomer. Including OOC talk -
this also happened mostly by some players from Xyllomer.

It's really strange to see ...

But as I wrote above, if an admin has no interest in solving
this, then nothing is solved.

> There is more sex roleplay per capita in Armageddon than
> in a sex MUSH, and I wish I was kidding. I have nothing
> against it, and I'm certainly not a prude when it comes
> to such matters, but it's not the most story-packed
> roleplay.

You can have any style of roleplay in addition to the above
too and I could also give various examples (although not
in a permadeath setting).

What are your alternatives to "story-packed roleplay"? And
can these alternatives happen with affectionate-driven
roleplay?

Granted, some players prioritize their own OOC interests
to the point of not really wanting to roleplay at all
whatsoever in the first place. But you have the same
problem with players min-maxing ad infinitum for the
ultimate badass PK-demigod, so I don't quite see why you
were to pick something that disturbs YOU specifically -
otherwise you would not have mentioned it - but don't
show what alternatives you would like to see OR not
pointing out other gameplay styles. Nor do I think that
any of these are mutually exclusive, either. You can
combine stuff. If you as a player are not interested
in something, well then you won't have an interest towards
any particular playing style.

> Although polyamory is common to the setting, it tends
> to devolve into soap opera dramatics, which will
> likely be the peak of a sexy character's roleplay.

Wait a moment ...

You wrote here that you dislike it aka soap opera dramatics.

So HOW does it affect YOU when you don't partake in any
of it?

Because I have a slight feeling that there are also
players who have no interest in "soap operas" so to speak,
who also won't make it a habit to talk about this so ...

I also can't help but feel that you dislike it, which
is revealed by the choice of your words. It's totally
fine to dislike whatever you want to but the same applies
to the reverse. From a game designer's perspective, they
will attempt to preserve the major theme of a MUD, but
this of course requires that you first DEFINE what the
theme is. In GEAS the theme is conflict, which means
PvP and PK (though ironically, that dwindled when idiotic
changes were made, such as the trap miracle killing the
little group PvP that was still left in the game).

People have different interests all the time. You want
more or fewer players? If you want to have more, then
you have to get them to play. And in general, the best
number one asset to play is called - other players. For
literally everything.

You can't have PvP if there is nobody else playing a
game.

> Many players do not trust staff

After having played at the least two MUDs, but also a
third one to a lesser extent, I would not blindly trust
anyone who is staff. In GEAS, due to the old admin team
fatiguing, non-admin wizards were put in charge at will.
So what am I to do there? Accept any random change coming
from random people? Nah ...

> and many staff do not trust players

Also understandable.

> This results in a subculture where many players simultaneously
> avoid communicating with staff

I can speak from experience in GEAS.

When you have admin not really discuss or talk about anything,
WHAT IS THE POINT of "communicating"?

I understand OOC problems here, mind you. Lack of time is a
big one. You don't get paid for a hobby project, yet you may
have to invest time into it, and then you get yelled at by
players for changes. I understand that this is no fun. It
goes both ways though.

> and complain they do not get enough positive attention from
> staff.

Very often for a reason, even though you brought the example
from Armageddon. But I am 100% sure that this is a problem
in many games/MUDs.

> For staff's part, they try to reach out to players

Armageddon then must have a better staff than GEAS has had.

> but it is easy to burn out when the response is distrust.

Also understandable.

Does the staff of Armageddon discuss changes prior to making
any change?

> Players and staff should work together to mend rifts, and
> they don't.

Eh. You have this in GEAS too.

I think lack of time is actually the bigger reason altogether,
but it is strange that you don't mention it.

Is the Armageddon staff paid to work on the game? If not, how
does it so happen that lack of time is not a problem to them?

> Seeing how players operated when they think they're alone
> was not.

Eh. You mean, you found out that people may cheat? And you
were unaware about this when YOU yourself played the game?

Seriously?

That's like thinking how the world records in sports are all
legal and valid because nobody roid-cheats or whatever.
shevegen is offline   Reply With Quote