State of Armageddon from a Player's Perspective

[Narf]

I think the GDB is a contest to crap on anyone's idea as hard and fast as possible. I think it's a net detriment to the game. I'm going to work on the willpower to only read my clan board.

I think if you actually did a survey of responses to new ideas, you'd get a pretty even number of players supporting or disagreeing with any given one. I suspect that you don't remember it this way because of the disparity in verbosity.

For example:

Typical supportive comment: Woot! +1

Typical nonsupportive comment: (Two page rant about why it's a bad idea)

So by word count, perhaps you're right, but by actual responses this isn't the case at all. And there's a reason the word count for disagreement is so high beyond just general human nature. When you're agreeing with someone you're not presenting any new ideas, so you don't need to say nearly so much. Some people do, but the lack of requirement for any new information skews the average towards short responses. Disagreement often requires one or more new ideas to be presented. New ideas=higher word count

[Nyr]

As for affecting you in game, I feel you're too quick to ban personally and not being able to use GDB in clan is a big deal sometimes. Also, I thought GDB can affect your karma.

To the former, put in a staff complaint.  You've done this before a few times, so you know the process.

To the latter, yes.  Your communication on the GDB or via e-mail can absolutely be detrimental to your account.  However, that's for the best.  No one is being forced to troll and flame on the GDB.

I'm going to work on the willpower to only read my clan board.

That's probably a good idea.

[James de Monet]

I feel like there are some really good, well-formed, and well-informed opinions in this thread, but as Nyr said, they are just opinions.  I think one of the things that people are too quick to forget is that being on staff is not, at heart, an administrative role.  It's a creative one.  And creativity requires vision.  If staff don't share in your vision, they're not going to want to create what you want to create.

The other issue is that the staff->player relationship is by default going to be a little bit like parent->child.  Because you as a player can be as intelligent, diplomatic, and persuasive as you want.  At the end of the day, though, it is still staff that are going to need to do all the work to make any idea you have a reality.  And I'm sure its disheartening for them when they come into the forums a day after a cool change that people have been asking for forever (like bury), and instead of seeing lots of people out using the new command, they find us all huddled on the GDB, having a chat about how we would really like to see more (x) in the game.  It's an 'I slaved over a hot compiler all day, and this is the thanks I get?' scenario.  What reason do we give them to keep cranking out new stuff, when we don't appreciate that which they have already given us?

Long story short, staff are people too.  If you haven't hugged one today, GO DO IT NOW.  And then maybe think about things YOU as a player can do to help THEM keep up the will to keep being awesome ("Ask not what your country can do for you...").





I feel like this thread is starting to take a turn for the worse.  Don't let that happen.  It doesn't have to go that way.  And whatever you do, please, please, please, don't antagonize the staff.  We need them.

[FreeRangeVestric]

I'm going to work on the willpower to only read my clan board.

That's probably a good idea.

Perhaps something like this, where staff agrees with a player that they should not bother getting involved in discussions regarding the hobby they invest so much of their time in, is only going to fuel the previously mentioned idea that staff can often come off as undiplomatic?

I hardly say this to 'flame or troll' (I need to protect my precious karmaz too much for that!), but rather I'm just trying to say what this could look like from a player's perspective, since both groups so often lose sight of the other's viewpoint. I also don't think there was anything inherently wrong with staff's response to this thread, which is the basis for this disagreement in the first place.

[Nyr]

Not really an attempt to be undiplomatic, quite the opposite.  Sometimes, we on staff are aware of history that indicates that it might be a good idea for someone to follow up on their thoughts.  In this case, KankWhisperer is aware of his own background here.

[Barzalene]

Perhaps it would be better to chastise players more privately, through the request tool, pm, email or mudmail. As we are not collectively aware of the history, the response may read differently than intended.

[Rahnevyn]

I think the GDB is a contest to crap on anyone's idea as hard and fast as possible. I think it's a net detriment to the game. I'm going to work on the willpower to only read my clan board.

This sentiment made me sad. We can do better as a community to foster productive, constructive discussion. If the GDB was only for clan boards, we'd only have clan boards on it. So how do we get better at using the GDB for good discussions?

I'm glad Kryos and others offered perspectives on how life as a player in Armageddon feels for them. I don't always agree with those views, sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't have opinions either way, but am just glad to know what you guys perceive. It's a very different perspective when you're in staff land than it is on the ground as a player, and I think everyone often forgets that. We can, and should - in fact we NEED to be able to disagree without people feeling like their ideas are being crapped on. That goes for discussions among players and between players and staff both.

[Harmless]

Please take Kyros' opinions as what they are, the opinions of one player. I read his full OP and about the first four followups and the most recent long post he made. There is almost nothing in any of them that I strongly agree with, and very much that I disagree with in terms of how accepting/helpful the game is for achievement style playing, which is to say I am on Nyr's side with being highly dubious of applying the Bartle stuff to arma in the first.place, and I think on the contrary that arma is the single best MUD out there in terms of game world impact from players. These are truly all opinions and Kyros' expectations are wildly different from my own. Been here seven years actively.

I also feel that all of Nyr's posts have been diplomatic here and there is really nothing offensive in this discussion to me.

[BleakOne]

Although I'm not really a veteran of Armageddon with only a few years of play under my belt, from my experience the staff are pretty great at doing things the right way. I've had two or three disagreements with staff over things in game in my time, but each was based on confusion on my part and the staff were never cruel or undiplomatic to me, they just explained it.

Sure, some people on Staff could be a bit softer in response, but they're human too and there's nothing directly flaming or trolling in any of the staff's responses.

As for the OP, it was a very interesting thread and gave me a lot to think on. I disagree with some of the points and agree on some others, and hope that this doesn't turn into another 'omg staff r evul' thread since up until recently it's been a good discussion.

[Zoan]

I used to rally against the staff and their ways, but one day it clicked. I gazed up at Nyr's enormous face. Six or so years it had taken me to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the ginger moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of my nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. I had won the victory over myself. I loved Big Brother.

[BleakOne]

I used to rally against the staff and their ways, but one day it clicked. I gazed up at Nyr's enormous face. Six or so years it had taken me to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the ginger moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of my nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. I had won the victory over myself. I loved Big Brother.

Dun Dun Duuuuuun

No wonder Tuluk is going all 1984. 

[Cutthroat]

I think the GDB is a contest to crap on anyone's idea as hard and fast as possible. I think it's a net detriment to the game. I'm going to work on the willpower to only read my clan board.

This sentiment made me sad. We can do better as a community to foster productive, constructive discussion. If the GDB was only for clan boards, we'd only have clan boards on it. So how do we get better at using the GDB for good discussions?

I'm glad Kryos and others offered perspectives on how life as a player in Armageddon feels for them. I don't always agree with those views, sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't have opinions either way, but am just glad to know what you guys perceive. It's a very different perspective when you're in staff land than it is on the ground as a player, and I think everyone often forgets that. We can, and should - in fact we NEED to be able to disagree without people feeling like their ideas are being crapped on. That goes for discussions among players and between players and staff both.

I personally prefer staff being bluntly honest to staff diplomatically beating around the bush and/or outright lying. With diplomatic honesty being the ideal. From my experience, staff are honest, whether they are diplomatic about it or not. I think that's the key to staff/player discussion. Even if players don't want to see that staff disagree with them on points, it's better to see that than nothing.

As for player/player discussion, one problem is that the GDB's main thread is just a giant dump of ideas. Imagine if RAT was closed. All the little neat ideas, the mini-discussions that get canceled out with a cry for MORE RANDOM!, and discussions about RP would actually thrive in their own threads. We would actually be used to discussing things and doing so in a nice and clean way, and there would be less threads like this that try to define where the game "is" right now because there would be a bunch of threads to look at for that general picture, each with equally thoughtful posts like that of the OP. We could even have a "bitch thread" where people can vent and cannot see each other's posts, or just encourage people to flesh out their complaint for something worthy of a Roleplaying Discussion thread. At the moment, we have mostly relegated ourselves to one-liners, petty comments about each other's play mixed in with actual insight and "keeping it random".

And there's the code discussion section. Every time I see "well, this is possible to do with triggers in your client, so I disagree with this idea" it irks me a little. That section should be dedicated to improving the game, not finding workarounds where the game falls short.

[FantasyWriter]

And there's the code discussion section. Every time I see "well, this is possible to do with triggers in your client, so I disagree with this idea" it irks me a little. That section should be dedicated to improving the game, not finding workarounds where the game falls short.

God, Yes. This annoys the living daylight out of me.  Almost as much as players saying things like "staff's time could/should be better spent on other things" or "I wouldn't use this, so it is a bad idea."

[Zoan]

Yeah that's why we don't have colors in the game, because like 4 people don't like the idea of color in their MUD experience (there's things called booleans, you can turn off ANSI with a single flag check).

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Way more than 4, but I agree - there really should be color. We have seriously had new players who decided not to stick around just because there was no color - I remember 3, from my Helper days.

[Lizzie]

As long as there were three possible options, I wouldn't care how many colors Armageddon comes with, or what colors they are. The options would be:

Default Arm colors
No colors at all
Client-side player-determined colors.

Without the option to create my own palate using my client's color tools, I wouldn't have lasted more than an hour in Armageddon the first day I started playing.

[manonfire]

Oh, the color discussion again.

[Cutthroat]

I guess I should have added in my last post about player/player discussion how ridiculously easy it is for a thread to go off-topic.

[Rahnevyn]

I guess I should have added in my last post about player/player discussion how ridiculously easy it is for a thread to go off-topic.

No kidding. Please don't veer off into code discussion in this thread, folks.

As for player/player discussion, one problem is that the GDB's main thread is just a giant dump of ideas. Imagine if RAT was closed. All the little neat ideas, the mini-discussions that get canceled out with a cry for MORE RANDOM!, and discussions about RP would actually thrive in their own threads. We would actually be used to discussing things and doing so in a nice and clean way, and there would be less threads like this that try to define where the game "is" right now because there would be a bunch of threads to look at for that general picture, each with equally thoughtful posts like that of the OP. We could even have a "bitch thread" where people can vent and cannot see each other's posts, or just encourage people to flesh out their complaint for something worthy of a Roleplaying Discussion thread. At the moment, we have mostly relegated ourselves to one-liners, petty comments about each other's play mixed in with actual insight and "keeping it random".

I've had this same thought several times. What do other people think? Would discussion on the GDB be better served if we had more focused discussion across several different threads, or is it more the way we discuss things, not the where?

[RogueGunslinger]

I think it's more likely people would post less altogether if you got rid of the RAT thread. People tend to like the idea that they can post little things here or there that aren't going to be bore down on by the full force of the GDB contrarian-squad, or fully dismantled line by line by ala Nyr. Which the more serious, focused threads tend to get.

[Dalmeth]

I've had this same thought several times. What do other people think? Would discussion on the GDB be better served if we had more focused discussion across several different threads, or is it more the way we discuss things, not the where?

I think your question here illustrates the core problem : we simply don't have anything interesting to say.

As a note to the original subject, I would add that the preponderance of the, "social," has more to do with attempts to enforce roles.

Yes, bear with me.

I do not believe any effort on the part the staff or players will ever be capable of providing a role for every player that enters the game, and the efforts to force people together, rather than encouraging social activity, tends to force people out.

Ideally, we'd have the game portion to keep people busy.  Hunting, foraging, and various means of taking advantage of NPCs.

The staff don't like people doing that like it's the only thing they have to do, but it often is.

Let's face it.  Spamming happens as much in the real world as here, with the buffalo hunts of the 19th century and just about any grab for resources (oil, wood, precious metals) ever as prime examples.

To attempt to restrain it by merely punishing those who participate does not change the fact people are encourage to do so by the very game itself.  Instead, I would tend to suggest seasonal availabilities, merchants who buy certain goods at certain times of the year.  Call it the ebb and flow of the caravans, but it's a bit more elegant than the opaque process of staff punishment (that I imagine) exists now.

[Zoan]

I'm really, really good at derailing threads. It's an artform.

Source: I was bored at work and now the complaints thread is about DBZ.

[Harmless]

The idea of merchants buying/selling pattern having seasonality is pretty cool. Maybe the way this could be coded (because I think merchants currently are static and don't have the ability for scripts that change buying patterns, even though there are merchants who SELL different items at different times of the year), are maybe NPC merchant buyers that travel from place to place. This has been suggested before (I think by myself). That would definitely help spice up the grebbing/hunting/gathering life.

[Zoan]

That'd be pretty amusing: selling some silky braies to the Kadius shop and the shopkeeper being all, 'Tchaw, purple? What is this, last Ocandra? It's all about *vermillion* nowadays, baby!"

[Barsook]

Has anyone seen this thread: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,31914.0.html  Would it mean anything to this thread?