The Staff / Player Divide

[manonfire]

[Nergal]

I would suggest focusing on the topic at hand rather than a very specific situation.

[LauraMars]

I have no doubt this thread started off with good intentions, but I don't think the direction it's heading is productive.  This is just a friendly, preemptive reminder, not directed at any specific individual, to behave politely and follow the rules.  Thank you!

[RogueGunslinger]

I don't really see how his post is off topic, it's really driving hard right to the heart of the issue that JdM was getting at. How can you talk about the player/staff divide if you can't talk about the events that led us to believe we're divided?

He was told due to his interactions with staff, complaining to them how things were handled on the behalf of other players, that he would have his character stored or reduced to the lowest rank, thereby removing him from the leadership position. That's the crux of the issue for me, one that Wizturbo's well reasoned post falls short of helping to explain. (really great post though, Wiz)

The events seem wholly unrelated to me no matter how much "well we obviously can't get along right now, so you shouldn't be playing in a leadership position where need to communicate." you throw at it. That just isn't a reasonable staff response in my mind. They took an OOC debate and brought it to the depths of the IC world. That's a fairly sacred line to cross for me. I love roleplay, so when OOC things greatly effect what happens to my character, I get pissed off too. If the staff are the sole reason behind that breach of IC/OOC, what is there to do but be upset with them?

Unless he was opening up requests for the sole intention of harassing the staff and belittling their decisions, such a nuclear option should really never have to be used on a player. I really don't get the feeling that Asanadas was coming from such a petty position when the whole reason he was there was for the sake of fellow players, and not even himself. By destroying his character like that they're basically saying they don't care what you've contributed to the game, or what you've worked to accomplish, it doesn't matter because you decided to get into an argument with staff and stick with it, your mistake.

[Patuk]

I think even the perception of this issue existing at all is a problem unto its own, but as long as every party involved insists everything wrong with everything else is on the other guys, threads like these is what we'll get.

[Mordiggian]

We don't discuss account-specific issues on the GDB, so knocking on that door is not likely to get a response.

[valeria]

a bunch of stuff

This.  Not all disagreement is railing.  I feel that a lot of times in text, honest confusion or misunderstanding is taken in an entirely negative way. 

I've been on the rest of the internet.  It's a dark and scary place.  We have a very good community here.  Our only problem is that we're all obsessed with an online text-based roleplaying game and we all have different ideas of what would make it better.

Some people do have legitimate grievances with how staff handled a particular situation.  I've been frustrated by responses before and I'm sure everyone has.  I'm sure staff has been frustrated with me before right back.  But the thing is, staff can't resolve your grievance if you don't dialogue about it.  And you can't have an honest dialogue if you're approaching the situation with your hair standing on end, your arms crossed defensively, and a firm conviction that you are absolutely right and anyone else is absolutely wrong and they are all out to get you.

In other words ...

I think communication is key to any successful relationship. And our communication has never been better than it is now.

I've found this to be very true.

[Nyr]

If you have an issue with staff, you take it up with staff.  This can be in the form of a staff complaint.

If you take issue with the resolution of your staff complaint, you can (of course, though it is a bit odd) put in more staff complaints.  Maybe a lot more staff complaints.  

(I don't know why any player should do more than two.  Honestly, we have discussed changing the coding around staff complaint responses because sometimes players will put in a second complaint because they did not like the response from one Producer...a response obtained in consensus with the other Producers.  It is often an absolute waste of time on both sides.  If you have pertinent information to add to a complaint, that's perfectly fine--but if you don't like the response because you want another Producer to respond, that's a bit much.)

If you take issue with the resolution of staff complaint(s) and either a) don't want to put in more or b) don't think staff are going to take your issues seriously, you are left with a very small subset of options.  They are as follows:

1)  Personal examination.  Perhaps communication and related issues are a two-way street. Perhaps your lane is a 10-car pileup; meanwhile you are complaining about the staff member in the other lane that a busted headlight...and it's daytime.  Maybe you are in the wrong.  Maybe you are not a joy with whom to communicate.  Maybe your communication style and content is so grating that it invites annoyance or is construed as trolling/flaming.  Take the time to be mad, sure, but also take the time to examine yourself.

2)  If after attempting personal growth, you still find that you are right, and staff is wrong, you are left with the conundrum:  is this staff made up of several people that are themselves players...all out to get me?  Could they all possibly have a grudge against me, through no fault of my own?  Some may well think this is the case, but they keep this opinion to themselves and it only slips out every now and then.  However, some few go farther than that and think it's a good idea to bring their case to other players because obviously, staff are biased.  That's where we get to #3.

3)  If after bringing up your issues with staff, then attempting personal growth/examination and also attempting to reconcile your version of events with the biases of reality...you still can't keep from trying to take your issue farther...then maybe it's time to throw in the towel and find another game to play.  There's only one way out at that point.  It does not end with you on a soapbox preaching about the evils of staff that wronged you, particularly when they won't discuss account-specific issues publicly.  (We used to do that when players would go off the deep end and start railing against staff injustices/conspiracy theories/etc.  We don't anymore per the Pig Wrestling Policy^TM.  Now we will just warn players and then ban them once they've gotten that far and refuse to see reason.)

[Delirium]

Maybe I'm reading a different forum from you guys, but I don't actually see that much railing against staff in the bank thread. I see a lot of pretty reasonably-phrased concerns, several requests for more details, very little arguing against the overall idea, a few knee-jerk reactions against it, and more than a few, "Wow, are you guys seriously whining about this? Just accept it already/everyone else clearly voted for it!" comments.

I really hope this thread isn't written with the intent to dissuade people from expressing disagreement or concerns with changes to the game. *Especially* not if the reasoning is, "Well, someone else probably already thought of your objections," or, "Staff shouldn't need to care about player input." Not asking for player input ahead of time is one thing; dissuading players from speaking about it at all afterwards is something else completely.

I think it's completely reasonable to ask staff for complete or relatively-complete documentation on new changes going in, which is what I read as the main concern. I also think the requests for such were voiced rather politely and with good intentions.

I sure didn't see any flame bait until this thread, which has, apparently, /really/ brought out the railing against staff. I understand the urge to defend and support Arm's staff, but insulting your fellow players by telling them they cannot possibly add anything else worthwhile to the discussion is not the way to do it.

Because I agree, and feel like it got lost in the back-and-forth. Let's stay on topic if we're going to have this discussion.

[Desertman]

I have never seen a community of people who want so badly to be in control of everything that they can't hardly stand it.

When you go to play League of Legends, or World of Warcraft, or Call of Duty, what sort of people do you mostly end up playing with? Mostly it's 14 - 21 year olds who are there just to grief inbetween their shifts at where ever it is they work when they aren't getting stoned in Mom and Dad's basement.

What's our community mostly comprised of? 25+ professionals who are fairly accustom in most regards to being the smartest most capable people on any project the majority of us will ever be a part of.

Take an entire community of those people, and tell them they have to just accept "on faith" whatever a group of anonymous internet nerds (said lovingly) above them on the epeen ladder decides for them with little to no explanation....and this is what you get.

Of course we want to know -why-. We want to know -how-. And you bet your ass, we all have grand solutions to everything that would fix everything if you would just fucking listen to us. It could be no other way. We are for the most part a community that survives in our real lives BY FIXING AND LEADING in some regard.

Nobody can do it better than us. Nobody will ever be able to do it as efficiently as we could...if only you would take our advice, because that's what we do.

That's our community in a nutshell. Of course it is going to cause "problems". Some people will get so "fed up" with being put "behind the curtain" and not being listened to that they will flat out get mad about it.

I think that's just a byproduct of our community and the types of people it takes to run a game like this and make a game like this run. Everyone here has tried some other MUD at some point. Everyone here has got a dang good laugh at the expense of the poor quality of roleplay in those other MUDs.

The reason our quality of roleplay is so high here and we can create the sort of in-game experience you can't get anywhere else is because of the type of players we have. We are achievers. We excel at every single thing we do. Even this game.

When you have an entire community of people, including the staff, who believes their way is the right way, because their way is always the right way...you end up with friction.

I think that friction is glorious. It's glorious because we have the types of players in our community where that friction is a possibility. If we didn't have those types of players, and those types of staffers, we would be the same subpar RP experience you can get in any other shitty game where people are spam killing snarks in the middle of city street and saying "rofl" in character like a bunch of herpderps.

Welcome to our glorious melting pot of "know-it-all's", where we all know it all, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

[roughneck]

Numbers 14:2English Standard Version (ESV)
"And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, "Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness!"

Staff do a remarkable job of reaching out to players, truly. The tools we have to file request, and the fact that they have imposed timelines on themselves which they hold themselves accountable is one of the testaments to this fact. Add to that their availability on these forums, their commitment to announcing changes to the game, and their asking for feedback from players routinely further proves it.

And they do it as volunteers!

I manage around 30 people at work, and I really strive to follow up with every single one of their issues, and it's -tough-. Very few are grateful, and many choose to believe that your intentions or priorities are misdirected. The bitching and complaining is exhausting, and it's easy for the people doing the bitching and complaining, and very hard for the person trying to steer attitudes in a new direction.

Leadership is hard, and winning the confidence of your 'followers' is the most challenging and draining part.

So, I empathize with staff, and moreover I respect their time and commitment. This really is their game, but they are gracious enough to say it is our game.

We're playing an extremely high quality, extremely well run game. If you feel alienated or not listened to, there is a very good chance that you're not living up to your end of the bargain.

Take accountability for the relationships in your life. If you play armageddon, your relationship with staff is one of these relationships.

[musashi]

I used to get up in arms about my interactions with staff (ok with Nyr, let's keep it real) some years ago. Nowadays I feel kind of embarrassed for being that emotional over a text based internet game.  

A couple years grinding up your RL skill to master goes a long way to mellow you out and put you in perspective about what the volunteer game masters of your local free to play RPG may or may not be getting up to ... and how much you ought to care.

[Beethoven]

I took a brief foray to another MUD while I was waiting for my Armageddon app to be approved. It'd received some positive reviews, and one of my friends seemed really gung-ho about it, so I thought I'd give it a shot. The character creation process in this particular MUD is extremely time-consuming, so this was about my third time logging in, making sure everything was in order, continuing to read through the docs, etc. There happens to be a global OOC chat channel on the game, which is the sort of thing I'd normally turn off, but I left it on because I was new to the game and wanted to feel out the entire experience, positives and negatives included. The moment I logged in this third time, the head imm was in the middle of calling out certain players who had been in high leadership positions in the past. Now, he didn't use names, but it was obvious to everyone who he was talking about, since he referred to them by their positions and when they had held them. He loudly declared that one of these characters in particular had "f***ed the theme in the a**" (asterisks and all), another, which had supernatural powers, did nothing but watch people MUDsex, and another had demanded unreasonable skill bumps. He also said that the playerbase as a whole didn't give a damn about the theme and just wanted to be a bunch of special snowflakes. This is just what I remember off-hand, mind you. There was more public shaming than even that.

I called him out on the OOC channel, saying that publicly calling out players isn't the way to make a new player who is currently wading through the docs comfortable about being accepted. He messaged me privately, and we had a conversation. I won't get into the nitty-gritty, because it was private and all, but basically, he attempted to explain why he acts the way he does, and requested that I stay despite his behavior.

You know what? I told him that he can run the game however he likes, because it's his game, and if this extremely unprofessional style of management works for him, good for him. I hate it, it makes me uncomfortable, and I find it extremely unreasonable, but he can rail about his players all day if he likes. He's the boss, and he doesn't answer to me. And I can go elsewhere, complain, or tolerate it as I please. And I chose to go elsewhere. I wish him good luck with his game, and hope his future leader PCs do not f*** his theme in the a** so vigorously.

Having that experience on that other MUD has really put any problems I may have with Arm's staff in perspective. Sure, they may be a little bit too corporate for my tastes, sometimes, but I've seen what can happen when there are no rules, and the imms can just run their mouths about whatever they want, and it's not pretty. I don't like being told to "file a request" about every little thing that I allude to on the GDB, but it's sure better than staff airing their grievances with your RP in public. Some of their policies are outdated, but they have policies instead of just running on some guy's whims. Yes, I believe that phrasing things in ways that would be easier on the playerbase would benefit everyone.

I feel for you, Asanadas, I really do. There's so much hurt in everything you post. I don't like what happened to you, at all, and I have a lot of respect for you. You're obviously a fighter, and in a lot of ways, I wish I were a fighter. I personally think we need more leaders like you, not fewer. I don't know the whole story, but I understand why you are bitter. I'd be red in the face, too. I can't say that I agree or disagree with what staff did, because I don't have the entire picture, but Asan, if you're right that a lot of people are "choking back the fire" in order to play here, then so be it. Just like people on that other game have decided to tolerate the head imm complaining about and calling out specific leadership PCs and bitching about the playerbase in general, people have found a way to play here. Yes, in the US there are checks and balances. It would be great if there were more "checks and balances" here, but really, they can run things however they like, and all we can do is suggest things, or complain, or walk away. There's no real point in acting like it's some sort of righteous mission, because ultimately, it's their prerogative to run things as they please, for better or for worse. All we can say is...this is pleasing the playerbase, this is upsetting the playerbase, or this is driving people away.

There are people who are genuinely upset with perceived injustice from staff. Maybe it is real, and maybe it isn't. I have been treated very well by staff, but then again, I never debate them. The most disgruntled players will never be won back over, but maybe an improvement in tone is all that is really needed to soothe the rest.

[valeria]

I've been treated very well by staff, and I do debate them.  I'm not going to bite my tongue when something is bothering me, because how else are they going to know.

But I also try to treat staff like I want to be treated.  I 
think that goes a long way toward effective communication.

The thing with tone is, in a text-based environment, a lot of the tone is just what you yourself read in there.  The most informative, polite statement can be read as annoyed and snappish.

That's why I'll say things like, "I feel like you're yelling at me." Or "I feel like you're shooting me down, and that doesn't make sense to me because..."  They might not be, but that's how I feel.   Most of the time the response I get is "we totally didn't mean it that way."  And I'll take it at face value because I don't know what Amos meant.  I only know how I interpreted it, and sometimes I'm wrong.

[Rokal]

I have never seen a community of people who want so badly to be in control of everything that they can't hardly stand it.

When you go to play League of Legends, or World of Warcraft, or Call of Duty, what sort of people do you mostly end up playing with? Mostly it's 14 - 21 year olds who are there just to grief inbetween their shifts at where ever it is they work when they aren't getting stoned in Mom and Dad's basement.

What's our community mostly comprised of? 25+ professionals who are fairly accustom in most regards to being the smartest most capable people on any project the majority of us will ever be a part of.

Take an entire community of those people, and tell them they have to just accept "on faith" whatever a group of anonymous internet nerds (said lovingly) above them on the epeen ladder decides for them with little to no explanation....and this is what you get.

Of course we want to know -why-. We want to know -how-. And you bet your ass, we all have grand solutions to everything that would fix everything if you would just fucking listen to us. It could be no other way. We are for the most part a community that survives in our real lives BY FIXING AND LEADING in some regard.

Nobody can do it better than us. Nobody will ever be able to do it as efficiently as we could...if only you would take our advice, because that's what we do.

That's our community in a nutshell. Of course it is going to cause "problems". Some people will get so "fed up" with being put "behind the curtain" and not being listened to that they will flat out get mad about it.

I think that's just a byproduct of our community and the types of people it takes to run a game like this and make a game like this run. Everyone here has tried some other MUD at some point. Everyone here has got a dang good laugh at the expense of the poor quality of roleplay in those other MUDs.

The reason our quality of roleplay is so high here and we can create the sort of in-game experience you can't get anywhere else is because of the type of players we have. We are achievers. We excel at every single thing we do. Even this game.

When you have an entire community of people, including the staff, who believes their way is the right way, because their way is always the right way...you end up with friction.

I think that friction is glorious. It's glorious because we have the types of players in our community where that friction is a possibility. If we didn't have those types of players, and those types of staffers, we would be the same subpar RP experience you can get in any other shitty game where people are spam killing snarks in the middle of city street and saying "rofl" in character like a bunch of herpderps.

Welcome to our glorious melting pot of "know-it-all's", where we all know it all, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Not to sound sappy, but here goes one of my sappy, happy speeches! , but desertman here has it right in a sense, in a positive way, he's saying that everyone here has an incredible passion for what armageddon is, I only joined last year in september, and I can relate to the passion that desertman here is speaking of. I've found a really nice place in armageddon, While im not the most active right now, im constantly looking forward to that chance to really get back into the RP and hoping to learn more about the world of zalanthas at every step.

Passion drives people to want to make the game better, make the experience better, make the RP better.

and well, the best way I can explain it metaphorically is that you guys are all like a big family. Why do family members argue? Passion. They freakin' care

My own experiance with the staff so far has been amazing - I come from BYOND, if anyone has heard about it, RP on byond is 99% of the time a nightmare, its worse , way worse then some of those RP muds that are an absolute joke. I came to armageddon with what i like to call 'Byond admin trauma.'  Dealing with admins on byond roleplay games was like this - players were litereally afraid to ask questions becuase if an admin thought it was a dumb quesiton, they would be banned. I've seen people banned on these games for doing something stupid in-character, the admin taking it out on the player OOCly.

I came to armageddon used to that, and I was worried about asking questions from the staffers. But in the end? No, they have been helpful, friendly, and even encouraging to a new player that is still daunted by a lot of the things within the game. They've gone out of their way to give me a peptalk when I was worried about a character concept going down in flames.

I don't think there is a staff/player divide.

I just think as above, that everyone here is passionate about armageddon, they want to make the game better - but the passion collides in a difference of opinions, so trying to find a way to direct that passion to a common goal might help.

[Adhira]

I've had some great fun with Armageddon. I've played this game and loved it. I've staffed this game and loved it.

I've read some comments about the work I've done here on Armageddon that has made me feel good and some that has been less than flattering, some of it I felt undeserved, but hey, some of it has been well deserved. At some point, I read comments about myself, about my own person, that were even less than flattering. I'd go so far as to say they were hurtful, spiteful and mean. That if my mother or my son read them they'd turn up at that person's door and kick the ever-loving-shit out of them (and if you met my mother or my son, you'd know I'm telling the truth here). That's what the internet is like.

Do I want players to feel like there is a player/staff divide? No. I really really do not. I don't want you to feel that we aren't listening to you. I don't want you to feel that you aren't valued. And I don't want you to read things about yourself on the internet that would make your family want to break down doors in anger? Definitely not. We are listening, and we do hear what you are saying, but sometimes in the end we will just not agree, and that is where things usually break down.

I don't want you to feel that we're continually moving your goal posts in this game either. When we make changes to the game we really do hope (and want) those changes to have a positive effect. I hear you about better PR. We can try harder there. Nyr and I put in hours of work preparing for Tuluk closure, I'm glad that seemed to have worked. What I haven't been sure about was whether 'PR' in general was the way to go. Sometimes I hear that we're too full of 'corporate speak' and 'PR' talk. So maybe we just need to couch it a little better, explain more, give more details, roll it out a little gentler. We'll try.

As to consultation on all the changes - that's not going to happen, at least not regularly, and others have mentioned why. There's just too many voices, it makes for too much confusion, and there's just so many opinions. But we do take feedback. We're taking feedback on the banking now and we're even shuffling up our timetable on some of our social strata changes due to that feedback.

As to the player/staff divide - I'd go so far as to say that if you're willing to forget the 'positions' and just see the people, we're all just exactly that. I don't really identify myself with the persona of 'Adhira', the label of 'staff' means little to me, other than a commitment I've made to show up and perform a series of functions for other people/the game (for example I've promised 3 hours of my time to do room approvals tomorrow night).  My bet is that if we all met up over a burger and a beer you'd find that there's very little 'divide', plenty to talk about, and lots of common ground.

[Taijan]

While I was trying to come up with a good way to word things, Adhira went and beat me to it.

My own thoughts on the dichotomy between player and staff- it doesn't exist. We're all players here, and we stick around because we (hopefully) love the game, and love the community.  The community is what holds it all together and makes it fun.

Sure, there are disagreements here and there. I've been wronged, and wronged others. But I hope to grow from it because, at the end of the day,

[Is Friday]

Helen gave me the best advice about this situation: You're making this a big deal when it doesn't have to be.

I'm still annoyed/displeased about what had happened to me. (Different situation than this Crim code thing.) But, I was responded to when I engaged staff about the situation. I guess that's about as good as it could have been. Neither me nor staff could "undo" what had been done up to that point, so dragging it on further wouldn't yield different results.

Even if what you find out is "I don't want to work with this person again and will avoid them", that's not wasted time if you dialogue to find that out. You always have options of what to do with your time. Going back and forth needlessly to no effect is wasted time.

If you don't agree with some staff about a subject, take your business to another staffing team. That is, if you've tried to problem resolve first.

[Saellyn]

I for one would drink ALL the beers with... most of the people here.

All of them.

Especially with Rokal. He and I together will drink half the beers.

[Delirium]

I don't want you to feel that we're continually moving your goal posts in this game either.

Alright, I'll bite.

I think this is the part of the entire post that most hit home for me. Looking back on the majority of my issues in the relatively recent past, this has been the root of it. An inconsistency between what I have come to expect and what is now the reality - but the issue arose because I was not aware of the new reality until it (often very negatively) impacted me.  Where I failed was in my attempt to simply roll with the punches and not say anything for fear of being a "problem player" - and then eventually bubbling over with frustration at the perceived unfairness and injustice of it all. It can be difficult to speak up when I, as the player, feel like I have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Staff holds the upper hand in every communication, so I feel they need to remember and be considerate of that simple reality so that players feel at ease bringing up issues and speaking their mind.

Where I feel staff failed was in being forthcoming and equitable with me in regards to these issues, and in not placing enough trust in me, that I could handle the truth. I also feel that when changes are made to game policies, no matter how little or small or secret it is, staff needs to come forward with it immediately so that players know what to expect.

Having played this game for over a decade now, it can be hard to reconcile and keep straight "things that were" with "things that are" - I suspect that's where a lot of the breakdown happens for me. Perhaps that is a simple fact of life for old veterans like myself. Still, regardless of the intention behind the changes, the simple fact is that when you put so much blood, sweat and tears into crafting a story, it is difficult not to react poorly when things happen that were outside the scope of what you had understood to be "the rules".

Proactive and transparent communication would go a long way here.

I do appreciate and thank staff for all of the hard work they do - I equally want staff to thank and appreciate all the hard work players put in, too.

I'll edit to say that I do feel that there were other issues where I was treated thoughtlessly, even poorly, and that there were decisions which staff made that I strongly disagree with, no matter how good their intentions were when making it. I don't claim perfection; I screw up too, but I try to admit it when I have, and I suspect a genuine apology would go a long way toward soothing those hurt feelings, even if there is nothing beyond that which can be done to fix matters, since what's done is done, what's past is past.

Those issues I will address separately through the proper channels.

[Armaddict]

Having played this game for over a decade now, it can be hard to reconcile and keep straight "things that were" with "things that are" - I suspect that's where a lot of the breakdown happens for me. Perhaps that is a simple fact of life for old veterans like myself. Still, regardless of the intention behind the changes, the simple fact is that when you put so much blood, sweat and tears into crafting a story, it is difficult not to react poorly when things happen that were outside the scope of what you had understood to be "the rules".

I very much empathize, Delerium.  I have had issues where 'things that were' became 'things that aren't'.  Things that were okay, are not okay.  Things that were wrong, are not wrong.  Things that were alright to say, are not alright to say.  Things have changed at a very slow rate to the point that I sometimes think of it as the water heating up, and I'm the frog.  Heh.

That being said, though.  Staff communication is -worlds- different than how it was.  I do not perceive this Iron Curtain, because every issue I've had has been free and open to discussion.  Combativeness, however, is never a good thing.  But what some people need to know is that what we have now between players and staff is a very different thing than how it was.  You guys have staffers openly discussing things with you on the GDB for crying out loud.  That's...holy moly sorts of crazy.  The only time you used to see staffers consistently was in personal emails, announcements, and occasionally, to quash a misrepresentation being delivered.  Player staff meetings were the only real place where players could publically, as a group, talk to staff.

In other words, I think there -is- a divide between players and staff, but I think calling it the 'Iron Curtain' -now- is ludicrous.  There is a relationship, a strong one, between players and staff now.  That was something that was very hard to earn, before, and when it actually happened, you were accused of being a pet.  Even if all you did was basically work along with their idea, or ask them to work with yours.  I feel like things are good now, and moving in a good direction, so far as this goes.  I still have my disagreements with certain things...but nothing that detracts from the overall experience that is Armageddon.  I don't quit my awesome job over disagreements on details of my job.  I won't quit my awesome game over disagreements on details of my game.  I'll just take vacations when things start rubbing me the wrong way. 

[Delirium]

I have been needlessly combative, yes - for which I will apologize and chalk up to that bottled-up frustration I mentioned.

I don't feel that invalidates my concerns, or that "things are better than they were" means things can't be better than they are.

I'm encouraged by the level-headed and optimistic responses. However, I will be waiting to see how actions measure up to the rhetoric, going forward.

It is hard to place faith in something after repeatedly being burned. I'm sure the staff feels the same way about the playerbase at times.


...and because I haven't used a gif yet,

[Armaddict]

Er.

To clarify, only the first paragraph of my post was directed at you.  The rest was directed at the newer generation of players who think communication right now is bad.  My general address of the 'Iron Curtain' assertion, if you will.

I would rarely call what you use as 'combative'.  Being a voice of dissent is not the same as being combative.

[wizturbo]

Great posts Adhira and Delirium.  Really good points.

To piggyback on what Delirium said, I sometimes feel the same way about reconciling "things that were" and "things that are".  I'll come back to aspects of the game that I might not have visited for years that require staff support, I'll expect one thing, and get something completely different.  It can be a bit jarring.  But, the game is going to continuously change...and I guess not all changes are going to be announced so the only way you find out they've changed is if you peek under that rock and see for yourself.

Not sure if I have a great suggestion on how to improve that, but I can echo it's a point of frustration.

[Nyr]

I've had some great fun with Armageddon. I've played this game and loved it. I've staffed this game and loved it.

I've read some comments about the work I've done here on Armageddon that has made me feel good and some that has been less than flattering, some of it I felt undeserved, but hey, some of it has been well deserved. At some point, I read comments about myself, about my own person, that were even less than flattering. I'd go so far as to say they were hurtful, spiteful and mean. That if my mother or my son read them they'd turn up at that person's door and kick the ever-loving-shit out of them (and if you met my mother or my son, you'd know I'm telling the truth here). That's what the internet is like.

A player asked me (quite a while back now) how things had gone with my wedding and honeymoon as they knew something about it from a request response.  I gave them a much shorter response than the second paragraph here when letting them know why I didn't post anything about it.

I like the game and the playerbase.  I am a player.  I've made some really neat people entirely through this game.  I had fun explaining to friends that this beach house trip I took involved meeting several people I've never actually met in real life, all to spend a week on the beach together.  I kind of expect that we'll get criticism for doing our jobs (either doing it well or poorly).  We'll get raked over the coals or praised.  Keeping that within the confines of the game is perfectly dandy, even if it's ridiculous.  (For instance, I occasionally will see a complaint or e-mail that is targeted at me, if only because that player has read some derpy post somewhere and assumes I am involved with something they didn't like...even if I were on an officially posted vacation and could not have been online to do whatever it was they accuse me of doing, anyway.)

Then there's the stuff Adhira mentioned--seeing crap get plastered blasting players (or staff, more often staff) often way beyond what is legitimate, grounded criticism and off into personal insults and diatribes and super weird shit.  Things that might well rile up one's friends and family, as Adhira put it.  Plenty of stuff that is obsessive, creepy, and inappropriate.  For me, that's why there's a divide between myself and the majority of players--you will for the most part only see the staffing part of this particular player.  Much as I want to share things with (most of?) you, I don't want my personal life to be used as fodder in someone's vitriolic internet obsession.

Apart from providing an objective viewpoint/structure for staff review, this is in large part why we have official channels for stuff.  This is why we are not that personal and buddy/buddy.  This is why we keep at least some distance.

My bet is that if we all met up over a burger and a beer you'd find that there's very little 'divide', plenty to talk about, and lots of common ground.

Yep.  Most of the APM announced stuff is all when I can't go.  I'd enjoy hanging out with you guys.