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Old 09-03-2007, 11:35 AM   #1
Perillus
 
Posts: n/a
To Chat Or To Splat

Not very sure to start because I have a truckload of questions and could really use some advice. I'm a very, very new and inexperienced imm off a smallish, RP-ish, restricted-PK mud, was pulled off the playerbase for a catch-all coding/building/admin position almost exactly a year ago and had been playing the mud for almost exactly one year before that. Basically I am all but clueless on what to do with myself and have screwed a few things up already (did I mention I could use some advice?) Three questions - please bear with me, I have no idea where else to look for advice.

1) Chat or splat?
Some players do things like trade inter-faction insults on the newbie help channel or challenge a much smaller player to fight every two seconds. The general policy with incidents like this is to tell them to stop and then talk to them about it. However, every time I tell them to stop doing something or try to explain to them what's wrong with their behaviour, I get a load of backtalk followed by accusations of partisanship and deliberately coded skill imbalances. It's extremely frustrating and I have no idea where to draw the line between patience and dealing out a hard smack. I've heard that punishments lose their effectiveness if handed out too often, yet how else can I deal with pains in the neck? Or is this simply because I'm only a junior imm, one whom people still remember as a mort?

2) Sheet of cheats
Second question I have is how to protect players from, well, other players. The trend is to pick out a player who is doing well, and then accuse that person of being an imm's alternate character who was godloaded. Alternatively, they accuse the person of being a bigger, much stronger player's alt who was buffed up by the larger character (which is banned under our rules). Because we are a RP mud, the impact of the accusations is hard. A variety of people have been targetted, including myself and other imms, and players have quit over it. I have no idea how to stop this as they take the accusations to private messages, anonymous notes and even to out-game chat programs. (I'm starting to hate MSN.) Players who get accused of being godloaded alts just aren't inclined to stick around. Is there anything at all that can be done?

3) Power factions
This is probably a stupid question but it's bothered me for a while, not least because it's contributing to player attrition. Two warring factions in my home mud makes for excitement, until one faction grows to about six times the size of the other and starts attacking the other one hourly. If we were an open-PK culture, people in the smaller faction might be more accepting of the situation, but unfortunately they are not and leave instead, making the imbalance rather worse. Should anything be done about this? At all?

I know some people will look at that monstrous block of text up there and ask me why I'm not taking these (relatively minor) questions to the head imm. As it happens I quarrelled with a higher-ranking imm last week over issues related to the above and have not returned to my home mud since...but I hope to make things right if I ever have the chance to go back. All I can really think of right now is to hope that some of you out there will share your experience. I have never been in an admin position of this scope before and yes - I am lost.
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