Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

[Misadventure]

A person can be a pernicious catalyst of destruction.

They can be the ever renewing trigger of destruction. So no it's not all their masterful control of humanity, just their ability to see human weaknesses, and instead of shoring those up, they manipulate them to tear everything down.

[Thenomain]

@Misadventure said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

A person can be a pernicious catalyst of destruction.

They can be the ever renewing trigger of destruction. So no it's not all their masterful control of humanity, just their ability to see human weaknesses, and instead of shoring those up, they manipulate them to tear everything down.

I have heard of Custodius second-hand, but have heard of him so many times that I am willing to believe he's exactly what people say he is. The closest I've come to interacting him from a staff level, not one of the four women who had problems with him would come forward, even anonymously and through a third party, for fear of his abuse. I felt terrible because I'd rather these four women than any one Custodius, yet I knew that we'd probably end up with the exact opposite.

Surprising nobody, I am going to also remind people: VA Spider.

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

The closest I've come to interacting him from a staff level, not one of the four women who had problems with him would come forward, even anonymously and through a third party, for fear of his abuse. I felt terrible because I'd rather these four women than any one Custodius, yet I knew that we'd probably end up with the exact opposite.

I'm curious. Why was he allowed to stay if you were staff, there were complaints and felt that way about the players he was chasing away?

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

The closest I've come to interacting him from a staff level, not one of the four women who had problems with him would come forward, even anonymously and through a third party, for fear of his abuse. I felt terrible because I'd rather these four women than any one Custodius, yet I knew that we'd probably end up with the exact opposite.

I'm curious. Why was he allowed to stay if you were staff, there were complaints and felt that way about the players he was chasing away?

Because I believe in a shade more due process than "I heard you were scum via some third party." Sometimes I believe in too much, but at the time it wasn't enough.

[Clarity]

No one ever reported him with anything more concrete than that?

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain It's no slight to you. That seems to be about par for the course with this gentleman's dealings with staff.

It kind of reminds me of this newspaper cover.

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel

If I had even one "she said", I would not have sat on my hands, but as it was, I had one person reporting on behalf of another, on four others, and none of those four were willing to explain the situation themselves. It was quite literally "he said that she said".

I don't feel insulted by anyone thinking it was the wrong move. I felt terrible at the time, but of me, Lamia and Troy, none of us felt that we could do anything, and we did throw someone off the game for things that happened on another game and we said, "Nope, not here, goodbye." The difference there was that we had someone who talked to us, we had a trail back to the events. Without that trail, without a reasonable connection, what do you do?

You do your best. And you own up to it.

[Ganymede]

@Shayd said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

...don't you think that crediting one person for ruining games is a bit of a stretch, not to mention giving him waaaay too much credit for his impact? I mean, even if I loathed him and thought he was the worst thing ever to "contribute" to MU*ing, I wouldn't allow that to push me away from a game I otherwise liked. It seems like you give him way too much power over your choices.

That may be true.

Looking at it another way, I really like alcoholic beverages, but I really won't accept one from Bill Cosby. Sure, he hasn't raped me (yet) and I've only heard second-hand that he's a rapist, but I'm not David Hume and I don't require a ridiculous level of proof to make an acceptable conclusion.

[Cupcake]

Can't connect. Anyone else having an issue?

[Roz]

@Cupcake Not me! And plenty of people on, so it must be an issue on your end.

[Sparks]

@Cupcake said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Can't connect. Anyone else having an issue?

I can reach it fine (for ping/traceroute) from my home machine, VPN'ing there.

However, from my colocated servers, there's occasional massive packet drop; some edge router heading into linode.com (where Arx appears to be hosted) is seemingly not super happy with, like, anything passing through Dallas (where my servers are) right now. Depending on your ISP, you might be passing through a similar mess.

So, I'm guessing whatever's gone sideways, it's some routing problem that'll clean up for you.

[Rogue.Spirit]

This is the second MU I have played on and the first one was already dying when I got there so really this might as well be the first. Arx has actually been a very welcoming enviroment with as few OOC Dramas as I could hope for when so many people are in one place. The staff has been very kind and accommodating as have most of the players been. I don't think people should refuse to give the game a try based on who else is there because it is a very big game and you can just avoid those players you don't want to play with. There is more than enough game space to do that. If the email address problem is really an issue you can easily create an email specifically for your Arx experience. It takes 10 minutes and you could get a good RP experience out of it for your effort.

So thank you Arx Staff and Players for being fricken awesome to me. I have really appreciated it!

Those of you considering Arx as a new RP home... You are a smart and amazing person and very much capable of coming to your own conclusions but I do hope that my review of Arx helps and that you give the game fair consideration.

[Cupcake]

I've just created a new House as a County in vassalage to my PC, with four characters added to the roster. Influenced by Polynesian and Japanese shore culture, House Seliki is now available for your consideration.

As a side note, previous gender-based concepts regarding the House's culture have been removed in accordance to theme. Cheers!

[buttercup]

I love Arx. It's a great game. I feel Apostate is an /amazing/ story teller and the vast majority of the player base is exceptional and of a quality that is stunning. I have been around the periphery on the game of some of the drama but have always been addressed fair and like an adult. I even respect the motivations of Hellfrog to keep the game and the nature of the game to their ethical and participatory standard.

It's a struggle to log on and play a character I love because of my growing dislike for Max OOCly. Max in terms of poses and running a story is exceptional. As a player he is very manipulative, temperamental, and he can’t separate OOC and IC. I have had a few players approach me OOCly about his shit-tallking about my player or character. I've had players tell me ICly how they feel he constantly manipulates and pushes OOC themed agendas. I just have done my best to avoid him at any turn while being polite and respectful.

During the siege plot Max kept trying to get me to teach him a skill so his rolls could be better is an example where I watch him cheat and passively manipulate things for his betterment. He wanted me to teach him a relevant skill being rolled (war or leadership I can't recall). I basically told him he should check with Apostate to see if it was okay to teach since we were in the middle of a scene/battle and he quickly dropped it because he knew it was unethical and cheating.

I've watched a myriad of new Thraxian players come into the game and basically say I'm out because of Max either from prior experience or not wanting to be in the House because of his presence after interacting with him. And I can't blame them. I have a major character in Thrax (Abbas) and I avoid public where he can go and when he arrives I find reason to leave or I just deuce out (log out, whatever).

I first went south of Max in game because I think I TS’ed with someone he was keen on. Had I known that this was the case I would have OOCly not done it and would have avoided that player because of the downward spiral that has created (from what I’ve heard) in past behavior. That player then let me know of some manipulative and disparaging statements made by Max. And that’s around when I noticed a ‘break’ in his behavior. For months I just avoided him. I don’t go to events he is at. I generally don’t enter any public room he is in and it limits my RP significantly.

It has gotten to the point in the past few months on the occasional times I do log on to play with others we go to private rooms to do our RP so we can avoid the possibility of the experience altogether.

I’ve started exploring alts to get out of Thrax in the process of seeing if I can find a way to bridge my game experience across spheres. It’s gotten to the point where in the Saffron Chain Gyre plot I avoided most scenes because Max was running and coordinating. I did my own actions and avoided participating with many others.

What sucks is I love Abbas and I love the course of the character. I have had to make some adjustments to make the character more game thematic but I’ve done them in stride. And I’m at the point where I’m looking for a transition not because of the character, or the game, but because I just don’t feel comfortable in an environment where he has a large role and influence. And I’m neither the first nor the last that feels this way.

I wish it was as easy as show a log and Max is dealt with. That’s the thing that makes him legendary though – it’s always just shy of or skirting the edge of abuse and manipulation. I don’t feel right asking staff to do anything about it. Our characters are too central to just keep avoiding each other so at some point I’ll likely retire my character and deuce out of the game or try and find a House with an alt I enjoy where I don’t have to interact with the individual as a player or a character.

And look – I have had my issues and we all have times where we are less than stellar. I’ve never witnessed someone be allowed to so directly influence negative experience for so many people though and consistently get a pass.

I’ll probably see if I can’t OOCly arrange a marriage out of the House and family. Or some other work around. But I feel the need to vent because it’s a Sunday morning and rather than being out and about in RP a player and I are role-playing in a private room ‘pretending’ it is somewhere else because we would rather not chance him dropping by.

This isn't a reflection on staff. I never have had an issue with staff and feel like I could go to them if I wanted and they would listen.. I hope other players who currently feel the same way will at least make it known and it's enough of an issue to do something about it but I recognize that my current solitary case is not likely warranting of action.

[Roz]

@buttercup said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I hope other players who currently feel the same way will at least make it known and it's enough of an issue to do something about it but I recognize that my current solitary case is not likely warranting of action.

Your single solitary case may not be, but as you say here that you hope other players who feel the same way make it known to staff, so should you. I'm sure there are a lot of people who are doing the "This one instance I've experienced probably isn't actionable enough" but enough of those and I'm still choosing to believe that if there's a giant enough pile of behavioral pattern they'll eventually have to do something.

[deadculture]

Isn't Max the one we know as Custodius? Well then, your two screens long post could have been avoided by reading the warnings posted.

[Caryatid]

@buttercup Log everything, and when you do find something actionable, submit it. I've submitted one complaint about him so far, involving his alt plagiarizing/copying my character's crafting works, and then harassing me to let him continue to do so (reworking my work in his style so it would match his bookshelves :P) when I caught him at it and told him to knock it off. Eventually staff is going to have to see the pattern instead of counting each individual incident of bad behaviour as an individual incident.

[buttercup]

@deadculture Thank you for your comment and it's a fair one. Unfortunately I was early on the game and by the time all this came out was already entrenched in the character. Otherwise like a number of other players subsequent to that reveal I would have made different choice.

[Arkandel]

@buttercup said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I hope other players who currently feel the same way will at least make it known and it's enough of an issue to do something about it but I recognize that my current solitary case is not likely warranting of action.

They have. I have. Many have left the game because of this guy. Nothing was done.

There's a line past which the attribution of blame has to include staff as well.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

Max/Custodius is VERY dedicated about working newbies and people unaware of his reputation. There's only so much avoidance can do on a game that size with the amount of players from other mediums (like RPIs and forums/journals) it draws.