Jan 22, 2018, 6:38 PM
Armageddon MUD
-
-
@evilcabbage this link actually makes the oppositions point, that using them for emphasis leads to confusion and conveys doubt or sarcasm.
http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/the-emphatic-use-of-quotation-marks
-
Thus wearing my linguist hat, I am inclined to treat the new boldface as a variant usage of punctuation which, since it is used consistently by users, cannot on any logical grounds be rejected as "wrong."
i think you will find the opposite.
-
@evilcabbage
No, I don't, and that's not even in the link I reposted. That you originally posted. -
@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:
i think you will find the opposite.
If you actually read those articles you might find a common theme arguing against using quotes for emphasis. Scare quotes cast doubt on the validity of something, so using them for emphasis really has the exact opposite of the intended effect.
If you saw a window sign for ‘homemade’ stew or a label promising ‘delicious’ waffles, would the punctuation affect how you imagine the food? What about a cosmetic product that’s ‘good’ for your hair, or a claim that a service is ‘free’? Are you feeling trustful? source
Kind of like trying to brow-beat people about grammar on an "advertisement" thread.
-
i'm not browbeating anyone, and i'm not having this debate, sorry. you can feel free to pm me. this isn't the place for grammar debates.
-
@evilcabbage but only because you are losing, right?
It's totally not a competition, guys.
ETA: guy posts three times arguing for why quotes can be emphasis, starts losing to Faraday, posts about how this isn't the place for the argument. Is one of the drinking rules covering this?
-
A good analogy is something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2zTrMf4eH4
TLDR- Player gets invited to game he doesn't understand. He commits some errors in thegame which requires a high level of understanding (both in terms of culture and mechanics) and is killed in the first session by another player. (L5R) They even use that same level of fucked up justification that is being used by the people on this thread to justify smacking down new players.Amusingly Armageddon is almost exactly the same in every aspect for newbies. By the defenders own admission the theme can't bend even slightly to put up with new players, you just kill them and punish them instead. If there was open ooc communication on game, this might be somewhat fixable with ooc informing new players to be more careful in their interactions... The current round about system relies on the player popping onto a discord- a system of communication outside of the game- and requires a player not to still share ooc information. So if the noble is pissed off at you, its considered not acceptable to say to them, hey oocly, what'll get me out of this alive and not beaten up, I'm new here and don't know what to do? That shit is highly discouraged, and depending on how the question is phrased.. against the rules, which we all know new players will know how to exactly turn the question into a legal one.
but nope, opaque system with poor communication somehow thinks its justified to have a intense culture of punishment for those who step out of line. This is in a game with perma-death. If they are lucky to survive, they soon suffer a deprived existence due to poor communication from staff and the community on how they can come back. Yurp, nothing fucked up with that at all. You know whats great? Being punished for ignorance, and then told that their ignorance is all their own fault, and they suffer the consequence... in an environment they are more or less naive about.
Also I'm not an old crochty player, I'm one of those new players.. who did thorough research of the setting. I bought the core book, and everything. Yet I still got fucking shat on because I didn't know which player was which and didn't know to avoid walking into a certain noble. (Again a Karma/Approval required role.) And even after being fucked over, was still willing to play until I got stone walled by staff who refused to help me figure out how to fix my shitty situation. I didn't ask for hand outs, but basic information. Why would any new player play a shitty game like that? Ever?
-
i have personally openly stated that i will oocly assist anyone who seems to be new to the game, and the climate you are describing is an incredibly old one. it does not fit into how we currently handle new players, and hasn't fit since i started playing eight years ago.
-
I’d argue that a message board with a new player question forum and a discord with a channel IS plenty.
-
Oh, than I must of been just crazy and imagining my entire experience one year ago. And no rebuttal to the earlier statement about how fucked up it is that such a culture is even considered remotely acceptable to fuck over new players for not being perfect on theme?
-
@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:
I’d argue that a message board with a new player question forum and a discord with a channel IS plenty.
I'd argue that a game which would rather beat, murder, or mug a new player to adhere to IC realism rather than offer OOC compromise is a pretty inhospitable place.
Count me out.
-
Hi! I teach English literature and occasional nonfiction writing (Business Writing, etc) to college kids, so I'm going to pull a little bit of rank here and say that, though I'm not a prescriptivist, grammatical rules, including guidelines such as what typesetting to use for emphasis, exist for a reason. That reason is clarity.
@evilcabbage: In your second link, by Grant Barrett, the author makes the following point:
But as examples on both sites show, there are proper, natural, widely understood rules behind using shout quotes, even if they’re taught in no grammar or style book that I can find. They’re appropriate when you have no other easy way to indicate emphasis.
Emphasis mine, because I do have an easy way to indicate emphasis. And so do you! It's called using the code above. Single asterisks are italic, as a for-instance. You'll note I use them frequently here, to demonstrate the facility with which one might employ them.
Let's take a look at the article from The Sun too (see, there I go, using bbcode again to its proper effect).
It is an understandable mistake. Quotations set off something, and it's a short step from setting something off to emphasizing it.
And the quote you picked out:
Thus wearing my linguist hat, I am inclined to treat the new boldface as a variant usage of punctuation which, since it is used consistently by users, cannot on any logical grounds be rejected as "wrong."
That's not arguing what you think it's arguing. It's arguing against stating linguistic drift as inherently wrong, but it is also (emphasis again! I just keep doing it somehow!) arguing that written linguistic patterns are "more resistant to change" (quote verbatim) than spoken ones, and that this change itself is not settled and is still in flux.
We can argue about singular "they" and the like all day, but even from your own articles, this is not a debatable issue either in layman's practice or in academia. Emphasis using quotes is not an acceptable practice because of its potential to be confused as scare quotes. I'd mark it off in my students' papers at the drop of a hat, just as I would an errant apostrophe or a comma splice.
Peace, but you're in error here, speaking as someone with at least a dash of authority in the field.
-
@oryx said in Armageddon MUD:
@TwinPrince that was a heartbreakingly lovely and open post. Thank you. I can't tell you how much I look forward to seeing you back in the world. You're right about storytellers not being particularly powerful, but I think with some patience and open communication, we should be able to see fair progress. Our current producers are easily my favorite I've ever worked with.
You say patience and open communication, but what it really means is if he's willing to eat enough dirt to appease your peers. Sorry to have to say it to you, since I do think you are one of the more sociable members of the staff, but it isn't something you have any real hand in.
The people who decide who is welcome are the producers, and the upper tier clan managers who toady to them, who decide which of the throw aways get to come back with a "clean slate". There has been more than a few people given the whole public welcome wagon return by staff during times of player unrest, only to be told they'll never have a shot at karma and they should be forever grateful - grateful - to be tolerated at all.
You can look that one up on the open Armageddon forum, if you like.
We're not even talking about cheaters and abusers here, either. We're talking about people who have said and done nothing, except to stick up for themselves when they're being stepped on. We're talking about people who said no, sorry, you're not going to treat me like that and were effectively told they can leave any time they want... and did.
One of them was driven out because someone on staff was actively animating NPCs to sexually and meta-harass her, then punished by staff for getting upset and posting about it. As far as I know, so was her husband. The candid staff discussion of it off the record was basically that "She's a mouthy slut.". Good show.
You can look that one up, with logs, on the open Armageddon forums, too.
It takes nothing but a contrary opinion to set not just the staff off, but the people who shine their boots, too. That's it, absolutely all it takes, to ruin a player and their chances of having a positive experience. There's a lot of "it used to be bad", referencing things when Bhag and Halaster were running unchecked abuses and favoritism, or people nodding and hesitantly admitting that, yes, in hindsight, maybe Nyr really was a cancerous snake. They throw it out there, like it's somehow going to give their follow up hand waving some credibility, but it's a bunch of rubbish.
It didn't used to be bad. It is bad and it remains bad because everything done, is done behind closed doors. I've seen screens your staff discussion board, I've seen screens of how staff discuss other players and behave when they're sitting comfortably behind the curtain. Staff insist we need to trust them, then get upset when players don't... despite the fact players have every reason not to.
When I got a look at my un-edited account notes, I was completely floored by what was written there. It had comments on my personal sexual preferences, where I was living at the time, the people I associated with off the game, other games I played and staffed on and even the players I've met in real life, including who I may or may not have had a "sexual encounter" with at an APM.
How is that relevant? You need that on my account notes in order to manage the game? You're not the fucking CIA, so keep my personal and real life information out of it, you creeps.
Your current staff leaders were all in full support of Nyr when he was actively hunting for people to punish for being associated with jcarters forum. It was like someone living out their enforcer fantasies - delete your account, swear to never ever post there again and you may be eligible for karma in six months, if we feel like it. There were groups of people being karma stripped because they had accounts on that website, so they could comment on discussions of games like SoI and EoE.
Not everyone was a cheater or a whistle blower, but everyone was being punished because the staff wanted that site to shut down. They didn't like the evolving situation where players felt emboldened to openly discuss their problems and post logs of staff abuses, posts that would have been scrubbed from the official public forum in minutes and players pressured into not commenting about.
Again, you don't have to take my word for any of this, you can go check the official and unofficial forums and find the threads, logs and other instances of these things happening. I'm not sure how castrated storytellers have become, but I'm pretty sure you can browse through account comments still. Go check the comments made by your peers on some of these people they're insisting are trouble makers and use your own judgement.
You can't promise anyone a clean slate, or a fresh start, because it's completely out of your hands. By the time you climb high enough in the staff ranks to actually be able to, you're going to be so burned out from having to deal with all of this you won't care anymore, or you'll throw your hands up and walk away like so many other well-meaning staff have.
The core problems have always been apathy and a stanch disregard for honest and legitimate criticisms. There is a divide between players and staff that is so deep, so wide, and so rooted in the old way of doing things that it can't change, because you can never escape your account notes.
I had account notes from around nine years ago, from a matter that I had been assured was long settled and an understanding reached, brought up the last time I played and thrown in my face as proof I couldn't be trusted - by someone who not only wasn't on staff back then, but didn't even start playing the game until a few years later.
The people who make the notes move on, but those notes remain there forever, to be interpreted and used against you, even if the matter has long been settled or the misunderstanding resolved. They write about how they suspect you were cheating, but they won't remove the comment when discourse shows it to be a misunderstanding. They won't follow up with a comment about how it was a misunderstanding, either.
You're fucked the second someone adds a suspicion to your notes and they don't even need to provide any context or proof. They just slap it on there and you're done. You cannot get away from it and no slate is ever really cleaned. That is how it's always been and always will be.
And the worst of it all is, the game can actually a lot of fun and would be even better with more players. It's been said consistently for over a decade that the worst part of the game is the staff behavior and how that staff interacts with players.
There are dozens and dozens of players who would come back to it the same day some really fundamental changes were made in how the game was administered. Instead, the revolving newbie door continues to spin and we have the same old discussions, over and over.
You're basically coming here and saying, you want new players and you want old, disenfranchised players to give your game another shot. What have you done to address the problems that continue to drive new players away, or the problems that have been costing you once loyal and satisfied players by the fistful?
Sorry Oryx, but it's just a re-hash of the same old thing. If you want new players to stick around (and we know they don't, or based on new accounts this quarter you guys go on about, you should have 100+ on at peak time at least), you need to stomp out the popular sentiment that abusing and kicking them around for mistakes is hilarious.
If you want old, disgruntled players to give you another honest chance, you should really look at a clean slate. Not a "welcome back, be grateful we tolerate you, we'll be watching you closely.", but a "we've done a global account note purge, here's your chance to come back and impress."
That last "all is forgiven" was a sham and we all know it. Try it without a dozen clauses and staff chasing up old vendettas against returnees next time.
You'd have more players logging in than you can handle.
Good luck selling that to your peers, though. They'll probably run you out of town for trying.
-
So what Arma needs it sounds like isn't players from Mushes... but fucking staffers who actually understand concepts of transparency and ethics. Lmao.
@Hedge Arma isn't unique in many of these things- most staff are not transparent on RPIS or what goes on behind the scenes- Arma I just know is the worst, by far.
First proposed solution- a who list where staff can't be invisible, all staff that are online must be publicly announced an online at the time. The mere fact that a player will never see when or which staff is online is insane, and a great source of mistrust for most of the playerbase. That alone is a step in the RIGHT direction. Give em tags if you want, Idle, Working, Observing, available, but they need to be fucking public. (For those of you uninitiated in RPI's, all staff are dark 100 percent of the time, and faceless)
-
you're welcome to file a complaint with staff if you find a player is treating you unfairly, especially as new player to the game. i have made my point on that very clear, and i think i've made it obvious that i do not subscribe to the belief that a new player should be forced into a situation like that when they don't have knowledge of the world they're entering into.
-
hedge, my account notes were a mess of "did this" "did that" "docked karma" "banned from the game" and yet here i sit with karma, a contrast to everything you just stated.
-
@evilcabbage i don't believe for a single second that you read everything that @Hedge said. pls try again.
-
This post is deleted! -
I believe I said something earlier about the Arm community being unable to take criticism, so I won't touch on that again...
@d-bone said in Armageddon MUD:
Amusingly Armageddon is almost exactly the same in every aspect for newbies. By the defenders own admission the theme can't bend even slightly to put up with new players, you just kill them and punish them instead. If there was open ooc communication on game, this might be somewhat fixable with ooc informing new players to be more careful in their interactions... The current round about system relies on the player popping onto a discord- a system of communication outside of the game- and requires a player not to still share ooc information.
The veterans have a natural advantage when it comes to game meta-knowledge. And the game is driven hard by competition. The "Murder, Corruption, Betrayal" tagline is a point of pride. The natural result: competitive veterans hoard knowledge and retain their advantage, forcing newbies to struggle and do without. Then the revolving door begins, where 20-30% of unique weekly logins are new players, and >99% of those give up before 24 hours of play.
I have tried explaining this a bunch of times back when I was actually an Armer. Of course they didn't like the logic I was attempting to apply to the problem.
It's unfortunate that the inability to compromise and take criticism is slowly ruining something that could have been a masterpiece.