Posts made by Hedge

@bronn said in Armageddon MUD:

It's simple gambler's fallacy. You sink in time and effort and immediately get shat on, but you hope it doesn't happen again. That's how delusional you have to be to get through the introductory phase of playing Armageddon. And I mean that in the gentlest possible way: it's a sort of delusion where you hope that something will be mostly okay, because it is mostly okay. It's just a weird feeling here or there that tells you that this might not be healthy.

After that, it's smooth sailing until you wake up and realize how much you've sunk in and what you actually got out of it. For some people that takes over a decade and a sudden, bizarre attack on you as a person.

That's uncomfortably accurate and I was happier not thinking about it that way.

@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.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

See how ranty Hedge sounds? Those are for the most part the people that are gone from the game.

Without a leg to stand on, you default to conceited hand-waving.

You got me, mate. Good show.

@faraday said in Armageddon MUD:

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

What I was trying to get across is: Some people won’t break character to show you the right thing to do or say. That’s one of the essentials of good story telling right? Show don’t tell. I know it can feel like it’s a personal affront to you the player, but most people aren’t doing it to make you feel bad or silly or haze newbies. Give it a chance because it might lead you somewhere good.

No, it really isn't one of the essentials of good storytelling, and this blind and repetitive insistence that it's the only good way to play is alienating people here far, far more than the fact that you're advertising a MUD instead of a MUSH.

What you're describing - reacting ICly to an obvious OOC misunderstanding - is not only uncommon on most MUSHes, it's considered downright jerk-ish behavior. Not because we're wusses who get affronted by challenge, but because we find it silly when people don't acknowledge that the character should know things that you, the player, don't know.

It's how things are there.

"You've never RPed until you've RPed on Arm.", like the game is the holy grail of RP - they invented it, you know, like Al Gore invented the internet. The now moved-on Nergal used to talk about how he didn't care if people left, because the people who stuck around made for better, truer RP, or something to that effect.

Sorry to say, but you and everyone else is wrong. You're either doing it the Arm way, or the wrong way. Just ask them.

They'll lynch you in-game for a minor error that's easy to make, like emoting walking over to the message board to read it - reading is illegal, you see. The message board is right there and newbies fresh off the wagon don't realize it's an OOC construct, because it exists as an object in the room, so they emote reading it and every bored soldier PC, tavern idler and their cousins are leaping at the chance to antagonize them for it.

They won't let them apologize and do-over, either. No sir, they emoted it, they have it logged, they'll go to the staff if they have to, to see that poor sod is punished for slipping up in his first ten minutes of being in the game.

I've seen it happen dozens of times. There are people who will aggressively go out of their way to report it to a Templar, a noble, a soldier, to see the character punished, even when the player is corrected OOCly (in the OOC channel) and tries to re-emote something more appropriate. They really don't give a rip, they just want an excuse to PK someone, or ruin someones time, just because they've got the opportunity.

I've been in OOC disputes (bad form, I know) with other players for pursuing newbies for "treason" for this very thing, numerous times. The staff is quick to sweep in and inform me I'm the one out of line for it, too.

Friendly to newbies, welcoming to all.

You shouldn't put stock in what ThugHeaven is saying, it's a bunch of flimflam.

He's a staff boot kisser and a karma farmer from their discord and gets away with discussing things there that would get someone else banned. The same thing happens on the GDB - he trolls, baits, snubs and belittles people there, but the administration turns a blind eye. They're quick to punish people for dishing it back at him, though.

The game is fun enough if you keep under the radar, but the moment you say the wrong thing in a request, or on the forums, or upset one of the preppy staff fan crew in their discord - and you will upset someone the second you break from the hive mind of endless staff praise - you're on the shitlist and you will never get off it.

You'll get karma blacklisted, staff will reject special requests for inane reasons (you used the wrong adjective in this description, resubmit please, etc.), block you from sponsored roles and the game world WILL suddenly start "coming to life" to "better reflect the harsh realities of Zalanthas", usually in the form of them animating God-like NPCs to kick your PC around, or otherwise make sure you're on the losing end of things.

Because of this long-standing behavior that has existed for at least the last 10~ years (they now hide EVERYTHING behind the request system, refuse to discuss anything they do with anyone and ban/censor the forums when people go public with abuses, so it looks "better than it used to be"), most players with any time under their belt will throw you under the bus the moment one of these animations happen. This is both because people who back up shunned players become shunned players themselves (people who supported redranger and other old school vets who left the game due to staff abuses, sexual harassment and other such behavior have been banned, or otherwise punished with karma removal, character storage or other petty punishments) and because mindlessly supporting staff is the fastest track to karma.

Karma is the measure that decides how powerful your character can become - skill increases out of chargen, magic, mastercrafting subs (to make custom items for people) and advanced subs (VASTLY superior subguilds that give game-changing skill gains; your ranger can become a ranger burglar with one subguild, making you basically capable of doing everything with decent proficiency), all of which are huge factors in who eats and who gets eaten. Karma = staff favor = who wins, who loses.

Or to use their "trust" line, it's a measure of how much staff trusts you... to lay back, think of England, and let it happen.

I played the game for over ten years and my refusal to continue running leadership roles back to back (due to no support for my own plot ideas, constant staff ultimatums ex; do this this way or you're stored, constant nitpicking about how I handled their plot directives, etc) caused me to be talked down to more and more, followed by karma removal, followed by accusations of "meta-conspiracy" against the staff, whatever that even means.

They're desperate for people who can lead clans, run plots and do so consistently, but they abuse, punish and bully those same people the second they stop enabling staff meddling. Staff like Sedhir are a good example of staff who use IC/OOC methods to meddle, to get the PCs and players he favors on the winning track and the others on the losing track. He's also getting to be well-known for his sexual/emotional attachment to a certain female player, who basically leads the game around with her sexual antics.

You can see him on the forums, talking about how he doesn't get to spend time with his wife because of all the time he spends working on the game, while he's mud-stalking some player with jealous abandon. It's nuts. Literally.

This game is toxic, unfriendly and highly punishing to anyone who shows anything approaching a backbone, or is unwilling to be slapped around and talked down to like a gimp.

They've tried to push their "friendly to newbies, all are welcome" bullshit on a few different sites over the last few years, as the revolving door that props up their "stable numbers" slows down. They like to talk about all these new players who joined this quarter, compared to last quarter, like it's a boardroom, but the fact of the matter is those new players they insist are here to stay are actually up and leaving within a week of play.

Why? Because it's the culture of Arm for old players to abuse the ever loving shit out of new players, as if it was some kind of collage hazing ritual. You don't have to take my word for it, go check their forums and search some of their threads about newbies. You'll see lots of people bragging about how they tricked a new player into going into a dark alley and basically stealing their money, boots, or other things that make recovering and pushing on almost impossible for a new player, who has no idea how to even find a bank to store their money before this happens.

Check the games reviews on other sites, where people talk about their first experiences and the rotten treatment they receive. And yes, the "piss" thing actually happened and has happened several times, by the same player, who always seems to get away with it. He does scat, too, if you're wondering. A real charmer. Friendly to newbies, welcoming to all.

This is also about the last RPI in existence that supports and enables pedophilia. You don't have to take my word for it, you can find the rules on this on their website, or check reviews on other sites. One of my last PCs was involved in a plot with a Borsail, who's big thing was he liked little boys, both for sexual encounters and to torture. He actively sought out PCs that were aged 13-14 with "little boy" style descriptions, to basically have sex with, torture and then PK, in graphic details. Not sure if I'm more worried he was doing it, or that there were a few people willing to play it all out with him, considering the content of the scenes.

Amusingly, when I stored that PC because I found the players zeal for boy-love RP unsettling. I was told that was completely within the scope of the game and that I should review the documentation. I argued there is a big difference between keeping to the harshness of the docs and spending all of your game time pursuing and engaging in questionable sexual exploits, while my PC handled all the running of the clan and doing all the OOC work that was supposed to be pedoman's responsibility.

There was no discussion of my view, I was simply "asked" not to play PCs in Borsail in the future.

The game always had it's problems, but the last few years have been the worst by far. I'll never go back.

Keep your distance, it's a nut house.