The Rise of the Metagame

[Armaddict]

You can't really "ban" someone from a game like this, in this day and age; but that's beside the point. I think we need to cherish every player we can get, considering our medium, aside from the ones who are explicitly trolls or OOC harmful.

You mean like people who spread guides that are completely based on treating NPC's like sparring dummies, explicitly?  Or do you not consider that harmful on an OOC level, to the game?

Knowledge of code and mechanics does not make a metagamer.  There's a certain degree of that that is necessary in a code-restricted roleplaying game to get desired effects within the constraints allowed.  But twisting that knowledge into such progressions and presenting them as 'good for the game' are not something to cherish for me.

I enjoyed this game with 30 people at peak times.  I don't need a huge playerbase. I need good people to interact with, even when IC actions upset me.  The above mentality jars me into an eyeroll and shake of my head.  Send that player away.  Their contribution is a release from the depth from the game, and a push into the realm of playing this like the typical MMORPG instead.  Which I don't really...call...RPG, the same way I do Arm.

[Asanadas]

Like I said, OOC harmful. They're breaking character to stab dudes to get buff. It's not good, but it's a symptom of the code. The reason some are doing so is so that they'll be buffer faster to actually be able to do things in the game.

The cat is out of the bag, my friend. Even if the numbers fall to 30, they're not going to be the same 30 as you remember. We need new players who are willing to play the RP game, and not this elitism, I'm afraid.

[fourTwenty]

Wow, that's a bit harsh on people who just want a map or something. I mean at the end of the day it is a game. It's not considered kosher to spread that kind of information OOCly but if that's what it takes for some people to be willing to play, I'm okay with it.

I'm not somebody who knows very much about the gameworld, myself, but there have been times when I wished I had some of that "common knowledge" everyone but me seems to have, not so I could get an advantage, but because it'd be something my character would already know because of his/her background. I think it was my second character who was supposed to have been hunting around Luir's with her father for years, but I didn't know anything about the region, the wildlife, etc. I would have appreciated access to maps or something. Not Big Ancient Magickal Secrets, just knowledge my PC would have gained.

A map of 'Nak for a PC from 'Nak, okay. A map of the area around Storm for someone who grew up hunting the land, fine. But these aren't what Synth was referring to. He knows as well as I and a great many other players know that there exists and have been passed around great big excel maps with every little nook and cranny shown, detailed, and annotated.

It's these maps, as well as spell tress, full flora and fauna breakdowns, etc that I have a problem with. The kind of thing an honest RPer wouldn't even taken from PC to PC let alone pass around to other players.

[Armaddict]

That is not a symptom of the code, that a symptom of the player's mentality.

If it was a symptom of the code, it would promote everyone doing the same behavior since we all use the same code.  It does not.  This comes from someone very code-oriented, but there are very definite lines that are important for the player to be able to recognize and not cross, and if it's a grey area, acknowledge that it's a grey area where things might swing one way or another.

[fourTwenty]

I enjoyed this game with 30 people at peak times.  I don't need a huge playerbase. I need good people to interact with, even when IC actions upset me.  The above mentality jars me into an eyeroll and shake of my head.  Send that player away.  Their contribution is a release from the depth from the game, and a push into the realm of playing this like the typical MMORPG instead.  Which I don't really...call...RPG, the same way I do Arm.

Here, here.

The cat is out of the bag, my friend. Even if the numbers fall to 30, they're not going to be the same 30 as you remember. We need new players who are willing to play the RP game, and not this elitism, I'm afraid.

Ahh, and herein lies the problem. It's not elitism. Its fondness for a product that can't really be found anywhere else and a fear that we may lose it. We DO NOT need new players to play the RP game. Let Mr repeat that. We do NOT need new players to play the RP game. What we need is new people to enjoy the RP on Armageddon. I don't play Armageddon to "play the game" If I want to play a game I sure as fuck don't choose Armageddon. This game sucks. I play Armageddon to live a story; to read an interactive, ever changing, malleable, shapeable novel. Simply put, I play Armageedon for the RP. And we need new people who are willing to embrace the RP, not just play the game.

[Beethoven]

I think you can look at those things and still be an honest RPer, as long as you use the information wisely and don't just find excuses for all your characters to "stumble across" knowledge that you OOCly know. The problem is that this is a hard thing not to do, and veteran players who came by this information ICly would end up with the same temptation.

I just prefer to judge people by what they do IG. If they're doing ridiculously stupid things IG or breaking character for the sake of skillmaxing, then that's not okay and I would expect them to be called out for it, whether OOCly or ICly. I don't care what they do or know or seek out OOCly as long as they are not spoiling anyone's plots.

[Asanadas]

If it was a symptom of the code, it would promote everyone doing the same behavior since we all use the same code.

How can you deny this? Have you ever tried to branch an advanced weapon skill? Have you ever tried to get steal or backstab high enough to depend on them? You can't do these things without months upon years, without bending character and finding excuses to do those things.

The fact is, people who do these things do so because the code promotes it, and empowers them. It's not the player's fault that he wants to be useful and have whatever sliver of power there is in a text game. I think you're coming at this without seeing Armageddon as a game; it obviously means more to you than that, but you're missing the trees that make up the forest. The code isn't perfect, and players are going to take advantage of what they can, and break character and make excuses, until it becomes clearly more beneficial to both them and their characters that they don't. This is basic psychology.

This is like deconstructing the Skinner box experiment by demanding the mouse stay in the corner, and not eat. It's just against game design understanding.

[Fujikoma]

Well, guys, I hate to break it to you, but this "rise of metagaming" is a rather horrible symptom of power-creep, particularly in combat clans. If you have a good boss, they'll let you get by with not being the best. But if your boss is all meta-as-fuck, they'll start considering the OOC number of slots they have available and considering who to hire who will not only increase their survival chances, but actually survive a while. Even if they don't, if staff organizes a combat RPT, in order for it to be a challenge, it's going to have to be geared towards those who survived the longest, which basically, makes your squishy PC cannon fodder. And that's innocent enough, but I recall a rumor, not sure if it's true or not, that some staff members frown on guild merchant joining combat clans, but that's idle speculation unless some sort of confirmation is delivered, so to be taken with a grain of salt.

So you see, it's not just the meta-gaming players that are the source of this. It's actually a tri-pronged problem. On one hand, you have  power-creep, other, code limiting survival chances, and then staff efforts to limit the number of slots for each clan makes, this kind of thing a little necassary. I don't like twinking or schedules when I could be RPing instead, so, I don't happen to join clans with schedules or emphasis on skill-sheets if I can help it.

EDIT: Also, you guys have maps? WTF? I just wing that shit.

[Beethoven]

I'm sorry. I can deal with people finding silly excuses to do silly things like go hunt quick critters or only use the skills they OOCly know are going to end up leading to a branch, or whatever. But I can't deal with people flat-out breaking character and doing things their PC would "never do." I guess that's a bridge too far for me. Most of this stuff is water off my back, but to me that violates everything that this game is about. Obviously, skills that people feel they need to do that for should be seriously looked at, but in the meantime I have little sympathy for people who engage in that behavior, if you mean what I think you mean.

EDIT: It probably doesn't matter what I think about certain players, though, so whatever. I just hope I never have to encounter that IG.

[Asanadas]

I've never shattered character that bad, but I know people who have, and I can appreciate why they do it. If things are changed and fixed, then they won't have to do such anymore.

[Miradus]

Most of my characters have died because I lose sleep if there's part of the game world I haven't seen or mapped yet.

That's my fun. Being alone in the wilderness, surviving the weather, terrain, and wildlife in order to see new things. I have severe vision issues so if there's more than 1-2 people in a room who are active, I can't keep track of what's going on. I'm not a social player at all.

Armageddon is big enough for a lot of different types of players to have fun in. That twinked up mul or magic user I simply am not likely to run into. And when I do, I don't tend to screw with them. I don't go into a bar in real life and pick a fight the biggest, roided up guy wearing prison tats, and I'm pretty sure my characters wouldn't want to either.

In all my characters, I've only had one guy try to pkill me without any interaction and that was in the 'rinth (which is a survival area all of its own). For the most part, you can recognize if a certain character is an ass and avoid interacting with them. Obviously some roles would have difficulty with that, but the type of characters I play just aren't really responsible for anything but their own skin.

I'm a twink and a metagamer and I am unashamed. I practice eudaimonia when it comes to games. I want the best stats, maxxed out skills, a massive understanding of the game world, and I am perfectly content working on that perfection alone through the game mechanics. I don't cheat and I don't generally involve myself in player-versus-player activity either here, or in other games. There's enough competition to be had through me versus the mechanics.

[Beethoven]

@Asanadas: Nobody has to do that, ever. If it's impossible for someone to max out certain skills without doing that, then those skills should never be maxed. I'm that hardline about it. The skills should be fixed but their brokenness is not an excuse to ignore your character. I have played MUDs in which there was roleplaying, but "good" people regularly went out and killed innocents in order to grind up their combat skills, then went back to the bar, acting like it never happened. I can't abide that kind of game.

[Fujikoma]

I think what we can take away from this is, if we value our plots and want them to continue, and genuinely enjoy playing our character, imposed upon us by outside forces is a mentality of "get buff or get wrecked"... because there are players, sometimes staff RPTs, or simple random encounters that will teach you this time and time again until you get it through your thick skull and do something about it. I enjoy my RP, I like to think a few others do, as well, though quite clearly some don't, so I have to defend myself in whatever feeble ways I can against the ones that don't, because everyone complaining about the metagaming aspect is quite possibly a closet twink who just wants us to lower our guard just enough on an OOC level that they can be like, "Bwahaha! I shit on all your plots, behold my glorious butt-hole!", and trust me, some people are like that, they're out there.

[Asanadas]

Most of my characters have died because I lose sleep if there's part of the game world I haven't seen or mapped yet.

That's my fun. Being alone in the wilderness, surviving the weather, terrain, and wildlife in order to see new things. I have severe vision issues so if there's more than 1-2 people in a room who are active, I can't keep track of what's going on. I'm not a social player at all.

Armageddon is big enough for a lot of different types of players to have fun in. That twinked up mul or magic user I simply am not likely to run into. And when I do, I don't tend to screw with them. I don't go into a bar in real life and pick a fight the biggest, roided up guy wearing prison tats, and I'm pretty sure my characters wouldn't want to either.

In all my characters, I've only had one guy try to pkill me without any interaction and that was in the 'rinth (which is a survival area all of its own). For the most part, you can recognize if a certain character is an ass and avoid interacting with them. Obviously some roles would have difficulty with that, but the type of characters I play just aren't really responsible for anything but their own skin.

I'm a twink and a metagamer and I am unashamed. I practice eudaimonia when it comes to games. I want the best stats, maxxed out skills, a massive understanding of the game world, and I am perfectly content working on that perfection alone through the game mechanics. I don't cheat and I don't generally involve myself in player-versus-player activity either here, or in other games. There's enough competition to be had through me versus the mechanics.

Very well put, my friend. 

Contrary to popular belief, the deck of cards model for MUD players still stands in Armageddon. It takes all kinds, and all 4 of the suits should be taken care of.

We've been a heart / club game far too long ignoring the others. What about the diamonds, who want to leave legacies in the game? The spades, who have no "new" area to explore?

There's fun in the metagame that adds a whole level of enjoyment to the MUD experience. Frankly, the first MUDs were exercises in the metagame, and that's how they were enjoyable. To just shun it and disregard it is fine, if you're getting enough enjoyment out of Arm as it is; but others crave enjoyment, too. I don't think it's fair to deny them that in our shared hobby.

Disclaimer: like I said, OOCly harmful practice like bug exploiting or vengance killing shouldn't be allowed. But the rest of the meta, I feel, should be looked at and refined.

@Beethoven: pretending like that is dishonest to the game medium, and I'd hope that staff would animate their victim's family, or tribe, in order to drag that character out to face their own action's consequences. That's the reasonable thing to do, and I'm pretty sure things like that happen regularly in Arm.

[Synthesis]

I think part of the problem is that we tend to post in superlatives on the forum, which leads to a faulty perception that things are more extreme than they really are.

[Miradus]

I have played MUDs in which there was roleplaying, but "good" people regularly went out and killed innocents in order to grind up their combat skills, then went back to the bar, acting like it never happened. I can't abide that kind of game.

I've been on those types of muds too and I think it's a builder issue, not a gamer or code issue.

There should be enough areas and mobiles of sufficient variety so that characters of all types, alignments, and persuasions can adventure without having to kill the same thing.

A game I recently played had almost all of its lower to mid level areas built around goblins. So you were forced to get through those levels by killing goblins, in an RP enforced environment. So good players were like, "Let's kill the goblins in the name of all that is holy!" And the evil ones were like, "Kill the goblins and loot their gold!" At the end of the day though, you were all killing goblins.

One of the things I like about ARM is there aren't really any "level" areas. I wander about the game world which I've mapped myself via TinTin++ (just over 4,000 rooms thus far. Go, me!) and when I see mobiles I have to determine whether I can eat them or they can eat me. The world is really just an open world and crap is going on that I don't even know about because it's outside of my three room range. I saw a tembo kill and eat a tandu once. For all I know codewise, when two shik meet up in the wilderness they get busy making baby shik.

[Miradus]

I think part of the problem is that we tend to post in superlatives on the forum, which leads to a faulty perception that things are more extreme than they really are.

Oh, absolutely. I don't like internet forums and game forums can be particularly nasty, vitriolic places but I am very excited about ARM and I can't just go up to some guy on the street and say, "I bashed a sand koala's head in with a bone club and got a skill increase!"

I have been playing muds since 1992. I have built and coded on several of them and know the DIKU code inside and out, but I've never seen anything as diversified from the base as ARM seems to be. Some people want to listen to songs on their new radio, and some people (like me) want to take apart the radio and see how it functions.

[hopeandsorrow]

@Asanadas: Nobody has to do that, ever. If it's impossible for someone to max out certain skills without doing that, then those skills should never be maxed. I'm that hardline about it. The skills should be fixed but their brokenness is not an excuse to ignore your character. I have played MUDs in which there was roleplaying, but "good" people regularly went out and killed innocents in order to grind up their combat skills, then went back to the bar, acting like it never happened. I can't abide that kind of game.

Dead wrong, it's required if you plan to have a combat PC that may come in conflict with other combat PC's.  

Is it ideal? No.  But that's the beast, you might not have run in the situation but that situation has happened, further to the point.  I've personally lost PC's/lost conflicts because I did not actively meta-game.  It's a real shitty feelings getting punished by the code for doing the 'right thing' and while it seems there little to no consequence to do it the other way.

It's perfectly IC and reasonable OOC that I would at least like to present a challenge with in conflicts and if I can't actively avoid them.  Perhaps I'm a weak little newbie, but I don't dedicate my free time to be some veteran's or metagamers personal ego boost punching bag.  To shame players for it...

I dunno, for so long vets held years of knowledge over us silly initiates  and newbies, they no longer do.  I can't help but feel, that's a good thing.

Nergal's on the right path, hinting at code changes.  Change the code, change the meta, obscure it again, perhaps calm down everyone who utterly feels the necessity in making reptilian hamburger every hour.  Hell if branching happened at High Jman/low advance that would alleviate a lot of silliness staff and players witness.

[hopeandsorrow]

I think part of the problem is that we tend to post in superlatives on the forum, which leads to a faulty perception that things are more extreme than they really are.

Listen man I'm excising my 'Merican right to Hyperbole, be damn if Imma let some one take away muh rights to make a HUGE deal out of stuff I DO NOT LIKE.

[Fujikoma]

I think staff alluded to looking at changes to flatten skill progression some (which, I could be crazy but, I'm noticing some, interesting differences), which, I mean, if FAILS WEREN'T REQUIRED, we could all attain reasonable competency just by using the skills instead of rolling up a dwarf with a convenient lizard-hating, rock-loving focus. I don't play too twinkishly (I always have a reason for what I'm doing IC and I throw in a few hemote/emote/semotes and we're all golden), but it's not the players who do that's the problem, it's the system which BY ITS NATURE encourages outright, get buff quick, get master or go home, fail a certain number of times per skill-timer ding, join combat clan get swole, lord badassness over people who don't want to sniff your armpits or wear your jockstrap on their head and are just out for some reasonably IC conversation.

[Beethoven]

I'll just keep on being shitty and dead wrong, then. I can shame, will shame, and am currently shaming players who actually straight-up break character to skillmax. I don't think I'm being unreasonable. I'm really lax about everything else, even if it's goofy or flimsy, but you should never be doing things IG that your character "wouldn't do." If you know you will be doing these things then you should make a character concept that jives with those things in advance, because I never want to see this game turned into the kind of game where it's understood that there are certain things that happened IG that didn't reeeeally happen, y'know. I've played too many shitty "RP" MUDs like that.

EDIT: I don't know what people are doing but if the words "break character" can be reasonably applied to them, people shouldn't be doing them. Am I surprised? No. Do I think the underlying issues that cause people to behave in this way should be fixed? Yes. But you can't just go around saying "It's not the players' faults; they HAVE to!" is just ridiculous. No one should ever be breaking character.

[Tisiphone]

This thread makes me miss Halaster and his roving gortok packs of doom.

[Asanadas]

Beethoven is right: players don't "need" to do those things in order to play an enjoyable character. But to lead a combat clan, or maintain a secret plot, the leader either needed to have their skills buffed by staff in creation, or grind. There's no way to reach an acceptable level of competency in any reasonable time, otherwise.

I don't have any problems with being shamed. I just wish we didn't have to do it.  

[Fujikoma]

I'll just keep on being shitty and dead wrong, then. I can shame, will shame, and am currently shaming players who actually straight-up break character to skillmax. I don't think I'm being unreasonable. I'm really lax about everything else, even if it's goofy or flimsy, but you should never be doing things IG that your character "wouldn't do." If you know you will be doing these things then you should make a character concept that jives with those things in advance, because I never want to see this game turned into the kind of game where it's understood that there are certain things that happened IG that didn't reeeeally happen, y'know. I've played too many shitty "RP" MUDs like that.

Look, if the game system didn't encourage them, why would I keep encountering people in positions of moderate, to extreme power whose character, by all outward appearances, is simple a smily face drawn on a paper plate and worn like a mask over an OOC desire to grief? Maybe it doesn't happen to you, I don't know. But I see it often enough that I'm just, yuck.

[Miradus]

... lord badassness over people who don't want to sniff your armpits or wear your jockstrap on their head and are just out for some reasonably IC conversation.

Oi vey. Yeah, I know what you mean, but I literally have only ran into that sort of person in-game maybe twice thus far. And for all I know it was the same player for both characters who had an unfortunate head-in-toilet day in gym class.

As another strange quirk of ARM, you could chart out the nastier interactions with other players on a map and by far the larger concentrations of red pins would be within 50 rooms of the Gaj.