A reasoned discussion of the current state of Armageddon vis-a-vis Olden Times

[Malken]

Armageddon used to be a game that if you put in the effort, went about it seriously, got people involved and Staff thought it was a cool idea, they'd go along with it and build what you needed and you could leave a permanent mark in the game world.

Now it's all automated and bureaucratic with an endless amount of forms to fill out and rules to follow and checkmarks that turned the mud into the static world that I feel it has turned into.

Maybe I should become an Armageddon lawyer to help people navigate all of this bureaucracy and forms they need to fill out before they can get their 3 buddies tribe into the world  

I'm thinking of poor Patuk and the months it took him to get his tribe going (how long did that last anyway? heheh)

(also, I hope that people realize that I didn't create this thread, Nyr created it and titled it - I really don't think that the game is currently "terrible" and that everything was better before)

[Desertman]

Armageddon used to be a game that if you put in the effort, went about it seriously, got people involved and Staff thought it was a cool idea, they'd go along with it and build what you needed and you could leave a permanent mark in the game world.

Now it's all automated and bureaucratic with an endless amount of forms to fill out and rules to follow and checkmarks that turned the mud into the static world that I feel it has turned into.

Maybe I should become an Armageddon lawyer to help people navigate all of this bureaucracy and forms they need to fill out before they can get their 3 buddies tribe into the world  

I'm thinking of poor Patuk and the months it took him to get his tribe going (how long did that last anyway? heheh)

I think the game still allows for players to do this. I think it may allow for players to do this sort of thing even more NOW than it did in the past.

In the past (many many years ago) a lot of getting things into the game did have to do with which staffers you knew and how well you were liked OOC'ly.

Now there are actual established processes in the game that let players build things in the game world if they put in the time and effort.

Is it perfect? No. But it sure beats the "Buddy System" of old. Things have come a long way. In my opinion it's a lot better than it ever has been previously.

[Malken]

I think the game still allows for players to do this. I think it may allow for players to do this sort of thing even more NOW than it did in the past.

In the past (many many years ago) a lot of getting things into the game did have to do with which staffers you knew and how well you were liked OOC'ly.

Now there are actual established processes in the game that let players build things in the game world if they put in the time and effort.

Is it perfect? No. But it sure beats the "Buddy System" of old. Things have come a long way. In my opinion it's a lot better than it ever has been previously.

I don't think it does. I think one of Armageddon's greatest illusion (not a magic trick!) and also it's greatest failure in the past few years is in giving you the illusion that it does. I don't buy it anymore. When I play, it's nobodies because I know I just can't keep lying to myself that I can actually get something permanent AND worthwhile.

We probably have a different definition of what is considered worthwhile and also how much time you need to dedicate to the game to get it done (which is cool, I'm not saying that my cool stuff is cooler than yours), but I just don't have the energy or time or whatever to plan stuff in a game for months, if not years RL just to fight to get the bottom of the bucket's scrap worth of my original plan into the game.

While I think that the "Buddy System" was wrong, now the needle flipped to the extreme opposite, where nothing can be done because it puts France's bureaucratic nightmare to shame.

Dude couldn't even go and just add a keyword to a mount without asking his boss and his boss's boss permission first.

[Nyr]

Now it's all automated and bureaucratic with an endless amount of forms to fill out and rules to follow and checkmarks that turned the mud into the static world that I feel it has turned into.

Maybe I should become an Armageddon lawyer to help people navigate all of this bureaucracy and forms they need to fill out before they can get their 3 buddies tribe into the world 

Just to clarify through the hyperbole minus the rose-colored-glasses nostalgia about the golden years of yore, it's not that bad.  You put in a request with the info for your tribe.  Follow these guidelines, please; it will hasten the process because it will be shorter and easier to read!  After approval, you can post for other players to take up the role with you, and now you have formatted, staff-approved documentation to give to them.

[Malken]

Now it's all automated and bureaucratic with an endless amount of forms to fill out and rules to follow and checkmarks that turned the mud into the static world that I feel it has turned into.

Maybe I should become an Armageddon lawyer to help people navigate all of this bureaucracy and forms they need to fill out before they can get their 3 buddies tribe into the world 

Just to clarify through the hyperbole minus the rose-colored-glasses nostalgia about the golden years of yore, it's not that bad.  You put in a request with the info for your tribe.  Follow these guidelines, please; it will hasten the process because it will be shorter and easier to read!  After approval, you can post for other players to take up the role with you, and now you have formatted, staff-approved documentation to give to them.

I feel like it took poor Patuk almost two months to get his tribe going but I will honestly admit that my numbers could definitely be inflated.

[Nyr]

While I think that the "Buddy System" was wrong, now the needle flipped to the extreme opposite, where nothing can be done because it puts France's bureaucratic nightmare to shame.

Feel free to provide an example of what could be done before that can't be done now, but you may also want to put it in its own thread.  This is moving beyond what could be set up and into your current rants about the game.  While worthwhile, that shouldn't take away from someone else's thread.  I can separate this out for you if you prefer.

Dude couldn't even go and just add a keyword to a mount without asking his boss and his boss's boss permission first.

Feel free to provide a reasonable example.  The above is silly, you only have to ask your boss.

[Nyr]

Now it's all automated and bureaucratic with an endless amount of forms to fill out and rules to follow and checkmarks that turned the mud into the static world that I feel it has turned into.

Maybe I should become an Armageddon lawyer to help people navigate all of this bureaucracy and forms they need to fill out before they can get their 3 buddies tribe into the world 

Just to clarify through the hyperbole minus the rose-colored-glasses nostalgia about the golden years of yore, it's not that bad.  You put in a request with the info for your tribe.  Follow these guidelines, please; it will hasten the process because it will be shorter and easier to read!  After approval, you can post for other players to take up the role with you, and now you have formatted, staff-approved documentation to give to them.

I feel like it took poor Patuk almost two months to get his tribe going but I will honestly admit that my numbers could definitely be inflated.

It did.  That's why we set up guidelines on what/how to submit, because the first submission was massive and unformatted.

[Nyr]

This is the split-off thread for how things used to be awesome but now they aren't.

[Malken]

While I think that the "Buddy System" was wrong, now the needle flipped to the extreme opposite, where nothing can be done because it puts France's bureaucratic nightmare to shame.

Feel free to provide an example of what could be done before that can't be done now, but you may also want to put it in its own thread.  This is moving beyond what could be set up and into your current rants about the game.  While worthwhile, that shouldn't take away from someone else's thread.  I can separate this out for you if you prefer.

Nah, it's fine. It wasn't so much a rant about Armageddon as a series of little deviations that went from "We should be able to pitch perma-tents" - "You can already do that buy renting a warehouse" - "I don't want a warehouse, I want a semi-perma camp" - "You can't have a fortress of doom, sorry!" - "Yeah but Halasturd would have built me one!" "Ask my boss if you want one!"

I'm good for now - Thanks for letting me rant for a while

Oooh, me own thread! I think that from now on everything should be posted in caps lock, though, for greater cane-waving effect.

[LauraMars]

Sooooooooo I kind of DO miss the Plainsman's way too European castle/keep thing that Tuluk took over. SUE ME. It was fun ok.

[BadSkeelz]

Since it apparently didn't belong in the former thread:


Many many years ago a clan was once created because a player lied to staff about how they were going to die of cancer and wanted to play this limited-time awesome-cool-clan as part of their bucket list.

That clan is still in the game.


Modern Staff: Dedicated volunteers bringing a professional standard of conduct to the management and growth of the game world, or heartless orphan-baby-eaters who are out to get you?

[Patuk]

The tribe thing didn't work out because I had to spend two months without reliable internet and one of my tribesmates ended up dying before even that because crimcode is an unforgiving mistress.

I'm going to try and stay out of this thread, but I'd appreciate other examples to be used. My tribe didn't work out, but other than its approving taking a little longer than I had anticipated, staff didn't do anything against it at all.

[Desertman]

I liked Tuluk back when the northlands was really just a small outpost in the forest/scrub....

Oh wait, Tuluk is that now.

It's a good time to be northern.  

[Akariel]

Since it apparently didn't belong in the former thread:


Many many years ago a clan was once created because a player lied to staff about how they were going to die of cancer and wanted to play this limited-time awesome-cool-clan as part of their bucket list.

That clan is still in the game.


Modern Staff: Dedicated volunteers bringing a professional standard of conduct to the management and growth of the game world, or heartless orphan-baby-eaters who are out to get you?

I've only eaten two babies so far...

Still, if you'd like to send in a request about this matter, perhaps we might find some more information about what you're talking about?

[Iiyola]

Malken, you're posting bitching so much that it almost looks like you're playing again.

[BadSkeelz]

I've only eaten two babies so far...

Still, if you'd like to send in a request about this matter, perhaps we might find some more information about what you're talking about?

Eh, if you really want me to, I can. I don't think it's anything more than an amusing anecdote illustrating that things used to be run a lot differently.

In case it wasn't clear, I think things are a lot better than now than they were back in the Plainsmen days, when it comes to Staff professionalism and running a fun game world. Is it more bureaucratic? Sure. Does favoritism and personality still play some role? Of course, we're all human and there's not that many of us in the system. But I'd rather have what we have now than the zany high-magickal "staff think an idea is cool so BAM Giant fortress!" zoo that Armageddon apparently used to be.

[Akariel]

Sorry if I came off snappy prior, I'm honestly pretty curious what you're talking about.

[Quell]

Since it apparently didn't belong in the former thread:


Many many years ago a clan was once created because a player lied to staff about how they were going to die of cancer and wanted to play this limited-time awesome-cool-clan as part of their bucket list.

That clan is still in the game.


Modern Staff: Dedicated volunteers bringing a professional standard of conduct to the management and growth of the game world, or heartless orphan-baby-eaters who are out to get you?

I've only eaten two babies so far...

Still, if you'd like to send in a request about this matter, perhaps we might find some more information about what you're talking about?

We can send in staff requests to get babies eaten?

[Desertman]

The only thing better about the past when stacked against what we have now was some of the players we lost.

We lost some really great players over the years mainly due to stupid personal disagreements between players and also between players and staff. Most of it is ridiculously petty stuff that would be squashed if only both sides would agree to say, "You know what, maybe I'm not always right, maybe you aren't always right, but let's agree to give it one more go.". (I think we did do that at one point and unbanned a lot of old accounts? I would like to see that again but with less of a, "Have you learned your lesson son?" and more of a, "We value you as a player and realize we are losing treasures we can't replace. Please come back and we will all try to do better if you also try to do better.".)

Unfortunately Armageddon isn't the sort of game that thrives on "new players". If you look at the new player numbers...we keep an EXTREMELY SMALL percentage of the new players we get to even look at the game.

I believe it is around 1% on average that continue to actually play the game after making an account? (Something very close to that.)

Every player we can get who does stick around for the long-term is a treasure. If we don't keep a long-term player we might as well count that as losing 200 - 250 "new players" a month. (That's about the number of new accounts we get?)

For every long-term player we lose to silly disagreements and personal conflicts  (no matter how well founded we think they are) we might as well just scratch off an entire month of voting because we just made it not matter.

Let's not even get into how long it takes to make a "new player" provide the same quality of play as a veteran player in terms of contributing to the game. Then we start looking at long-term players going away as a loss of not only numbers, but a loss of quality as a whole.

It's a sad situation. I wish we could get some genuine olive-branch politics and a sincere representative to reach out to the "other side" and invite those people back with zero snark and zero scorn.

The only thing I miss about the old days is the people we've lost from the old days. Replacing one of them takes years. If our ratio of "losing long-termers" to "keeping long-termers" fluctuates too much...you end up with extremely low peak-time numbers.

[BadSkeelz]

Sorry if I came off snappy prior, I'm honestly pretty curious what you're talking about.

It sounded more concerned than snappy TBH. My internet's been too patchy these last few weeks for staff to actually "get me"

Incidentally, any one who thinks the game is worse now that before needs to go through some of the Starter Shops. So much cool swag.

We can send in staff requests to get babies eaten?

That's technically a PK report, right?

[wizturbo]

In my experiences, Armageddon's fun factor can be boiled down to two ingredients...which are extremely intuitive and obvious, but tend to get the least amount of focus:

• Good players are active.
• Good staff are active.

The more these two elements are engaged, the more Armageddon is fun, regardless of policies, processes, clans that are open or closed, cities that are opened or closed, classes available for play, etc.  These aspects of the game are like switching between D&D 3rd edition to 4th edition.  Sure, the game plays differently, but if you have great players and an awesome DM the game is going to kick ass no matter what player's handbook is sitting in front of you.

If you think the game isn't as fun today as it was in the past, look no further than who you're playing with regularly, and which staff you're interacting with.  

In regards to the current slump we're in, personally, I can feel Talia and Cavaticus' presence missing in the game right now.  Their awesomeness permeated through all sorts of things over the last year, and with RL stealing them away (temporarily) I feel the game suffering.  That's not to say that the other active staff aren't awesome too, but any small team that's down two members is going to suffer, especially if one of those members is a leader.  Hopefully the new/current staff feel empowered to try and fill their shoes.  I could easily be missing some other staff that were behind the scenes kicking ass, but obviously I can't tell who they are as a player unless I'm interacting with them via reports.

There may be some awesome players on break too, but that's hard to keep my finger on the pulse of...GDB activity =/= player activity.

[Ender]

There really does need to be an honest discussion over what keeps players interested in the game and what staff asks of those players.  There absolutely needs to be a give and take between staff where players admit the constraints of the game are necessary to follow regardless of how things have been in the past, and staff need to help communicate in a professional manner what avenues are open to players to achieve their goals.

I really think belittling Malken with the title of this thread would fall into the category of unnecessary antagonism myself.  I agree that Malken's statements are hyperbolic, but hyperbole on the other side only serves to make a further divide.

[ibusoe]

We lost some really great players over the years mainly due to stupid personal disagreements between players and also between players and staff. Most of it is ridiculously petty stuff that would be squashed if only both sides would agree to say, "You know what, maybe I'm not always right, maybe you aren't always right, but let's agree to give it one more go.". (I think we did do that at one point and unbanned a lot of old accounts? I would like to see that again but with less of a, "Have you learned your lesson son?" and more of a, "We value you as a player and realize we are losing treasures we can't replace. Please come back and we will all try to do better if you also try to do better.".)

Yeah, I think the staff should create an outreach program to people who feel burned.  I also think that people should get like an annual get-out-of-jail-free card, in case they have a bad day and shoot their mouths off.  

Also, I think the staff should be a bit quicker to admit when they're wrong.  

I honestly think things are much better than they were in the past, but I think the game could be improved considerably if we were nicer to people.  Earlier staff may have had something of a justification to be kind of mean, given that it's really hard to launch a game.  But this game is almost twenty years old.

This isn't an anti-staff post, it's a pro-staff post.  But sometimes players get the short end of the stick.  

I can remember a couple of times where staffers have been mad at me, and sure, I had pretty solidly fucked up, but it was very difficult to effectively backpedal off of my mistake given the amount of vitriol that was directed at me.  Thankfully those days are largely in the past, but I think it's still too easy to get labeled as a problem child.

[Desertman]

I really think belittling Malken with the title of this thread would fall into the category of unnecessary antagonism myself.  

In a perfect world we would never see any snark out of the powers on high. But, let's be honest since we are all being honest...we have all seen more than a little bit of snark over the years.

Are people just people and eventually everyone has a snapping point where they say, "Look you little shit. I'm in charge so it's my way.". Yes. That happens between people.

It's never a good thing though. Even if it isn't said, it has been implied many many times over the years by people here.

It has to be hard to deal with our playerbase. I will be the first to admit we can be some serious pains in the ass. The again, when you volunteer for staff you know what sort of players you are going to be staffing over. One can only assume you were one for many years yourself.

I think when you take on a staff-name you should really be ready to say, "I know I'm held to a higher standard now. No matter what, I will always keep it professional. No matter how bad it gets...I will be professional. If I get to a point I can't be and I want to throw out a little snark, then I need to step back and let another staffer not personally invested take over.".

But, then again, this is an online game community and my ideas about what's professional might not hold any sway at all in this environment.

I just know how I would like it to be.

When you can be nice. Be nice. When you can't be nice, be professional. Never be snarky. It doesn't breed disappointment, it breeds personal resentment. When you start breeding personal resentment, you go from making someone upset about a situation to making someone upset about the entire game as a situation...then they don't walk away from a particular situation, they walk away from the game as a whole.

Anyhow, that's my two cents.

[wizturbo]

There really does need to be an honest discussion over what keeps players interested in the game and what staff asks of those players.  

We talk about that all the time, but honestly, keeping staff interested and engaged is probably even more critical.  

Few reasons I say this:

1)  They're doing a bunch of work, for free, and often get criticized by the people they work for.... any situation like that has to make keeping them engaged difficult.  I know if I spent 40 hours of my free time building something for a game, and the players criticized it more than they praised it, I'd get burned out really quick.  When I build stuff for my tabletop D&D campaign, I get to see the players have a good time, and they're my friends so they're not going to shit on my work even if there are parts that aren't perfect...  The Armageddon player base isn't nearly so forgiving.  Also, building stuff for my D&D campaign takes way less time than building in Armageddon.

2)  Simple numbers game, if you have 100 active players and 8 active staff, lose 1 staff and you're down 13% of your staff presence.  Multiple clan's lose their staffer, or an entire timezone loses all/most of it's staff animations.  

3)  I strongly believe that one of the things that keeps players interested in the game is having staff attention to whatever it is they're doing.  Lose staff, and you lose players...whereas losing players may have less of an impact on staff morale...if only because at least less players means less work for them?