Player Magnet

[SuchDragonWow]

There was a long time hater of Armageddon who's left like ten years ago and still complains on just how "bad" it is. Is there anything we can do to change that guy's opinion?

"Just think of any negativity that comes at you as a raindrop falling into the ocean of your bliss."  --  Maharishi Mehesh Yogi

[deathkamon]

I've also been checking out the polls and it seems like most people either wanna do an HRPT or do things in general to put some excitement in Arm. If there were some mudders who used to play Arm but now playing other muds, then they should be our core focus on who we should try to bring back.

[Jihelu]

I stopped playing for a while and simply came back because I missed being able to play.
Not sure why

[RogueGunslinger]

I don't want to let this one be page-rolled.

Treat people who leave and have issues with the game with respect. Be kind and generous, not flippant and condescending. Use criticism as a way to improve, don't take things personally.

Furthermore if someone has an axe to grind, let them vent. If you're going to respond don't try to contradict or argue with them. Offer them a family role. Chat with them about fun character concepts. Share stories, and encourage them to talk about what they found fun about the game. If they continue being negative don't respond at all.

I, obviously, need to work on a lot of these things myself.

[Miradus]

Just ignore angry ex-players. Potentially new players aren't children. They know that some people have an axe to grind.

When I was considering playing Arm I saw a SHITLOAD of bad reviews. And then I tried it anyway and liked the game some. Then I read this forum and thought, "What a bunch of asshats" (because it's human nature to fixate on a few asshats in a large crowd instead of the crowd as a whole).

But that bc1w person in helper chat was nice to me and answered my questions so I kept on fiddling around in the interface and really started liking the game.

Post about the features. Post some of the stories. Leave it at that. Nothing else needs to be gone into.

[Riev]

You are under no obligation to cater to people who boycott or no longer use your product. However, it would be absolutely foolish to not have someone hear their concerns and determine if there is a change necessary that you havn't thought of.

Stop treating people who don't play the game like their the anti-Christ. Like RGS said, everyone should be treated with respect. And if they want to vent, let them vent. Forcing them to go other places to vent is a poor choice, because people bond over mutual dislikes FAR faster than they do over mutual likes. If you want people to continue buying your product, make the best version of it. Sometimes that includes finding the Small Data that you never thought of.

[Armaddict]

I'd be glad to have players who have left back.  I'd enjoy it a great deal.  There are some that are still active around and about the game, but not in the game, that are from back when I started playing.  I used to chat with them back in the IRC room.

The only problem I have is when one of them (not one in particular, but any one; this is to say that we have some of them here, as well), one of many players, insist that the change must come about to their way or they won't play.  I can't really work with that.  I can't really deal with that.  That's pretty much telling me that they won't come back to play and discuss things as a player, they'll only throw these stones from afar and insist that any other way is a poor way of having the game.  But I know there's still fun for me in the game.  A lot of it.  I know I get to do a lot of things that are cool to -me-, but it may not be to them.  So if they insist that the game in its current state is unplayable, that's...well, again, I can't really work around that.

As is, I admit I do have problems with the dissemination of some information (not skill trees and such, because who cares?  But when people rant about current plots and PC's and start a rumor/gossip mill that is largely filled with untrue conjecture that those who are not exposed take as their only exposure to said region of the game/player/character/plot...it exemplifies the meaning of why we don't have pure, unmoderated forum discussion, to me.

I'd love to have more of the old veterans back.  I'd love to have new players.  But we do have a very big problem with finding a 'one size fits all' balance for the game, and for what we get out of it, I just have to be okay with that idea that some of them won't come back, some won't leave, and some will continue to hold a line in the sand about their position that is, in essence, a line that doesn't need to be there.

[Reiloth]

I'd be glad to have players who have left back.  I'd enjoy it a great deal.  There are some that are still active around and about the game, but not in the game, that are from back when I started playing.  I used to chat with them back in the IRC room.

The only problem I have is when one of them (not one in particular, but any one; this is to say that we have some of them here, as well), one of many players, insist that the change must come about to their way or they won't play.  I can't really work with that.  I can't really deal with that.  That's pretty much telling me that they won't come back to play and discuss things as a player, they'll only throw these stones from afar and insist that any other way is a poor way of having the game.  But I know there's still fun for me in the game.  A lot of it.  I know I get to do a lot of things that are cool to -me-, but it may not be to them.  So if they insist that the game in its current state is unplayable, that's...well, again, I can't really work around that.

As is, I admit I do have problems with the dissemination of some information (not skill trees and such, because who cares?  But when people rant about current plots and PC's and start a rumor/gossip mill that is largely filled with untrue conjecture that those who are not exposed take as their only exposure to said region of the game/player/character/plot...it exemplifies the meaning of why we don't have pure, unmoderated forum discussion, to me.

I'd love to have more of the old veterans back.  I'd love to have new players.  But we do have a very big problem with finding a 'one size fits all' balance for the game, and for what we get out of it, I just have to be okay with that idea that some of them won't come back, some won't leave, and some will continue to hold a line in the sand about their position that is, in essence, a line that doesn't need to be there.

Yeah, I would almost challenge the old players you describe (who i've had interactions with as well) to just play the game. I imagine they'll have a swell time. I know I do!

[Jihelu]

I'd be glad to have players who have left back.  I'd enjoy it a great deal.  There are some that are still active around and about the game, but not in the game, that are from back when I started playing.  I used to chat with them back in the IRC room.

The only problem I have is when one of them (not one in particular, but any one; this is to say that we have some of them here, as well), one of many players, insist that the change must come about to their way or they won't play.  I can't really work with that.  I can't really deal with that.  That's pretty much telling me that they won't come back to play and discuss things as a player, they'll only throw these stones from afar and insist that any other way is a poor way of having the game.  But I know there's still fun for me in the game.  A lot of it.  I know I get to do a lot of things that are cool to -me-, but it may not be to them.  So if they insist that the game in its current state is unplayable, that's...well, again, I can't really work around that.

As is, I admit I do have problems with the dissemination of some information (not skill trees and such, because who cares?  But when people rant about current plots and PC's and start a rumor/gossip mill that is largely filled with untrue conjecture that those who are not exposed take as their only exposure to said region of the game/player/character/plot...it exemplifies the meaning of why we don't have pure, unmoderated forum discussion, to me.

I'd love to have more of the old veterans back.  I'd love to have new players.  But we do have a very big problem with finding a 'one size fits all' balance for the game, and for what we get out of it, I just have to be okay with that idea that some of them won't come back, some won't leave, and some will continue to hold a line in the sand about their position that is, in essence, a line that doesn't need to be there.

Yeah, I would almost challenge the old players you describe (who i've had interactions with as well) to just play the game. I imagine they'll have a swell time. I know I do!

Some are banned. Some just don't want to. Some have moved on.

I don't like to discredit anyones experience or feelings but some may have already tried coming back and found their experiences repetitive or their roleplay stale, not their own but others/people around them, to not be what they want.

[Cayuga]

Voting does wonders. I always notice a huge influx of applications when we are top 3 on TMS. So, let's vote.

[WarriorPoet]

I would like to see reviews pushed on other sites and maybe player stories shared. I wrote a story years and years ago about a guy saddling up for a ride south from Tuluk and getting harassed by elves and eventually, afoot and alone, dying of thirst. I put it up on NationStates and TMS, I think, and people seemed to respond positively. I got a few pm's and shared the Arm link with them but I don't know if they made any effort toward it. Still, something to think about.

I -REALLY- like the idea of making a push at our pals from ten years ago that lost interest for whatever reason and maybe figuring out a way to tailor an HRPT to newer characters and see if we can't spark some interest in getting them to return.

[Gaare]

Social Media.. Especially Facebook ads. (focused on people with MUD, Dark Sun, etc. in their interest list.) They really work.

[Miradus]

Social Media.. Especially Facebook ads. (focused on people with MUD, Dark Sun, etc. in their interest list.) They really work.

Facebook ads cost money AND when I was running a business and used them, they yielded not one single sale. I know that's kind of anecdotal, but it's my experience that I'm sharing.

[Riev]

Facebook ads tend to be more of a bother and a scroll-fest than anything, but the idea of marketing isn't a bad one. MUDs are dying, and the only methods we appear to have are word of mouth (which, with less and less players, is less and less effective) and two MUD sites that have had the same users for decades.

There's gotta be another way to do marketing, and I'm sure there's someone who would be willing to volunteer knowledge of AdWords or whatever is used now.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Facebook ads tend to be more of a bother and a scroll-fest than anything, but the idea of marketing isn't a bad one. MUDs are dying, and the only methods we appear to have are word of mouth (which, with less and less players, is less and less effective) and two MUD sites that have had the same users for decades.

There's gotta be another way to do marketing, and I'm sure there's someone who would be willing to volunteer knowledge of AdWords or whatever is used now.

My thoughts exactly!

[Lizzie]

Social Media.. Especially Facebook ads. (focused on people with MUD, Dark Sun, etc. in their interest list.) They really work.

Facebook ads cost money AND when I was running a business and used them, they yielded not one single sale. I know that's kind of anecdotal, but it's my experience that I'm sharing.

I "work" (quasi-volunteer, I get paid for helping at the events themselves) with social media for fairs and festivals around the state. Our first year we held the first-ever state-wide food truck festival, at the local fairgrounds. The print-ads were minimal - a 1" ad in each of three weekly local papers, and a bit of free public relations from the local TV station and their anchor's blog. The rest of the PR took place online - Facebook, specifically. We had our own "company" facebook page, which created an "event" facebook page. We targeted a broad audience - incrementing every week until the final week before the event. We got 13k "is going" hits, and around 250k "clicked the link to see the event page" hits.

We were expecting 13k over the course of the weekend, which is a lot of people for this type of event. All through what is known as "digital word of mouth" advertising. You invite your friends list, ask them to invite their friends list, and so on and so forth. Very little cost involved in this, I believe it was $10 for a month to send it out to 100,000 people total.

Traffic to the event shut down the highway and choked traffic for a mile in each direction on the town's main road, and and our trucks ran out of food within the first half of the first day. We had approximately 13k on one DAY. Most of these people found out about it through Facebook (where readers could click through to a discount ticket page). The parking lot was overflowed in the first two hours of the first day, the police had to be called to divert traffic, the fire department had to be called to "cull the herd" safely when it became clear we were all in over our heads. Though the trucks that ran out of food considered it a HUGE success, the biggest moneymaker they'd ever shown at, it was a logistical nightmare, and cost many thousands of dollars in fines and police-presence fees that we hadn't accounted for (nor had the police, when we met with them prior to the event to discuss logistics).

Don't underestimate the power of creating events and publicizing them on social media. The downside to doing this for Armageddon, is there's no location. You can't expand your customer base by "x" number of miles, because Armageddon doesn't exist on a physical street address.

If you use hashtags though, you could probably extend it out toward the demographic you're looking for: literate gamers between the ages of 16 and 35.

[Narf]

We could put out an add offering huge discounts to people that roll up elves.


I think it would be setting appropriate.

[Gaare]

Facebook ads tend to be more of a bother and a scroll-fest than anything, but the idea of marketing isn't a bad one. MUDs are dying, and the only methods we appear to have are word of mouth (which, with less and less players, is less and less effective) and two MUD sites that have had the same users for decades.

There's gotta be another way to do marketing, and I'm sure there's someone who would be willing to volunteer knowledge of AdWords or whatever is used now.

I work with Facebook in many non-profit organizations and sometimes it takes time, but that actually works.  It may be much different in US, so I am not the one who can press the issue further.

On the other hand, "MUDs are dying" is an aurgument I disagree strongly.

There is a new generation out there for whom staying in front of a game for days/months/years is actually normal. I mean MMORPGs. One may argue those games have graphics, but those games offer very little to none in graphics sense compare to many video games out there. Also there is minecraft and other pixel games which offer almost no graphics but still millions are playing.

MUDs are not as popular as it was in mid-1990s, but player market is so so much greater now. Surely, a single mud like ARM can not affect a great change in game-culture, but in any case if there would be a chance to reach out even a small friction of that huge player-base, it would be great for ARM.

By the way, Google ads is nice idea.

[Miradus]

To chime in on the "muds are dying", I'll point out that people said the same thing about books when television came about.

When there were no graphical MMO's, more people played muds, this is true, but I think with the rise of the internet, the net volume of mud players is bigger than that 1990's Ultima Online experience.

There will always be people who prefer text over graphics and an immersive roleplay environment over fancy features.

The bigger problem I see in the (several) muds that I play is stagnation. They simply are not innovating code-wise. I haven't really been here long enough to know if that's an Arm problem or not, but for many muds the lack of strong, sweeping code changes is a problem.

[Evilone]

Lately, code changes for me are the most exciting thing to look forward to in ARM as far as updates go. I think there was a long time where we didn't really see anything at all, and right now I get excited whenever I see a post by Nessalin in staff announcements under Release Notes.

If you want to get older players back at least, you need bigger impacts in the story. When Tuluk closed, that was a big change, and I think it saw a big influx of older players returning, and it might even have kept newer players who could get involved in the action of the 'zombie' plots. I never saw the supposed 'light show' afterwards, but I don't mind that sort of thing. It sounded like there was some action going on in Allanak anyway, that had opposing sides and conflict.

I think there should be big story arcs that are set to last about three months, or half a year. I'm really tired of the sorcerer kings honestly. They really barely do anything, and they are just 'content' to sit in their cities. That's boring af. The Tablelands plot seemed to fizzle out, I know as a player I might have let down staff due to RL commitments, and it seems staff got busy RL as well. It might not have been so successful in the end, but the idea was great. In a RPI mud, I think you will find it easier on staff for big scale plots to be PVE. There should be small options underneath for treachery and PVP, but against a big antagonist against Allanak (the biggest PC centre for ARM), the enemy should be NPC. There are many, many ideas we could discuss and go for. Read some Harn campaigns, or D&D if you want inspiration. It would be great for another sorcerer king to pop up and really challenge the other doosh bags. Steinal would be a great example. Maybe since the city was buried, they have formed a Subterranean city, deep in the earth. For a long time they have been rebuilding in secret, and now are ready to return to the world. Allanak gets shit scared, needs greater weapons and armour for troops, needs to build fortifications to guard their eastern front. Grebbers will be called for stone, wood, obsidian in great numbers, etc. New players immediately can get involved with contributing to the war effort, or be conscripted as actual soldiers as the demand would be high. New players as recruits won't have crim immune, so they can't abuse, and it gives them a chance to get into combat with other more experienced players. Steinal is all NPC, and whenever the militia are out on patrols staff can throw down soldiers and they can actually have real battles on the field.

Armageddon: The Return of Steinal. Fuck yeah I want to get involved with that shit.
Armageddon: The Eyeless Swarm
Armageddon: The White Mantis King

Also, update Chronology pls. It's been well over a year... these little things are important to people. I'd suggest drastically shortening the time that needs to pass IG before staff are allowed to update it as well.

[Dresan]

The current setting in Allanak and the area around redstorm does have issues that probably should get address in an HRPT. Just like issues with gypsy lands were beautifully resolved with the last hrpt, opening the door to some current plots. Those sorcerer kings and over powered servants are making things feel stale in a world where magick is actually beginning to feel more rare and mages are really people first. Would anyone really want to get involved with Templars/nobles in an openly hostile fashion towards the city, when their bosses are so overpowered they can kill you with a mere thought no matter where you are hiding in the known? Probably not. I know some people and have and will do so, but it really feels like a ticking time bomb, just a matter of when the staff will decide a red/black robe will notice and snap their fingers.

All that said, I'm really enjoying the direction of the game, and cannot give the staff kudos enough.

I know there are critics but Gith plot, and coded changes big and small make this game really interesting for both the new and old players. I remember us hitting 70~ people at peak before tuluk closed, that number soon dropped drastically, it still fluctuates but we are hitting 60~ some nights if not more again. The difference is off peak, where we used to average 10-15 people, is now 25-35. I really really love seeing places like Luirs and redstorm get attention, I would kinda love to see blackwing outpost, cenyr and morins get a bit more love as well if the player-base size allows it.

While I look forward to guild changes, and the next HRPT but I'm not bored or have a lack of things to explore/try lately. Meatcraft is a wonderful change for hunters, and there were some new cool rooms added which I recently found too with cool stuff to buy. In short, the staff just need to keep doing what they are doing and from all signs the population will continue to increase because its has become a much better, more robust game then it was 5, 3 even 1 year ago. This is important because when you do eventually have those big events that attracts alot of people to play, they'll probably end up staying to try out and explore some of the new RPing opportunities available thanks to all those small/big changes.

[Miradus]

Alright, let me just drop this here, I'm not mad and I'm not interested in defending my statements. I have one idea of how I want to play and staff has another. They don't appear to be compatible so it's time to move on. Been fun, sorry it didn't work out, yada dada. No one mud ever feels the loss of any individual player and I've made no impact at all in my time here, but I think it's fair that at a point where you're concerned about the loss of players that I share why you're losing me.

I recently died (surprise!) and staff decided to punish me for treating my characters as disposable by not approving my next one for 48 hours.

Have I died a lot? Yes. I die doing what I like to do ... explore the game. And as you well know, exploring is extremely dangerous. Particularly after about 5 months when you've already fully mapped out all of the "safer" areas.

But the nature of the game you have set up here is that it's better to explore (and potentially lose) with a new character rather than an older, longer-lived one. Your skills will be higher with the older one and therefore your survival odds are better, but let's face it ... a 1 hour old character stands about the same chance of survival as a 3 day one up against a mekillot or a suicide squad of invisible gank spiders. Or 4 gith sitting at the bottom of a chasm.

So not only does an explorer have to go through the extreme risks of dying while exploring, but also apparently face staff scrutiny as to their motives when they're out in the wastes and get killed.

That means this game is not particularly explorer friendly, which pretty much crosses it off the available game list for someone who is explorer focused. While it's a very good game, well-coded, with excellent roleplay, it's simply not built to sustain the long-term interest of explorers. To be fair, I've been suspected that's the case for awhile since all I've been seeing in the release notes is fiddling around with wiz commands for creating drinks and such and not adding new areas. Eventually I was going to see and do everything possible and that would have been the end anyway.

So best of luck and I hope this gives you some insight into the explorer mentality and whether or not that's what you wish to attract in the future. No hard feelings. I had a great time.

[Yam]

I recently died (surprise!) and staff decided to punish me for treating my characters as disposable by not approving my next one for 48 hours.

Are you sure? I've had a good 150+ characters, many of them "throwaways" who just tried to eke out an existence in the middle of nowhere and died within hours. I've never had a word from staff about it.

Either staff policy changed recently (doubtful), you're leaving something out, or you had an atypical experience which you should probably follow up on with staff (maybe a higher staffer).

[BadSkeelz]

There's always the chance that your app just gets lost or overlooked in a queue or no staffer happens to be available for a time, too. Short of an actual message from Staff telling me as much, I'd be very skeptical of viewing the processing time for any sort of request as being maliciously delayed. If Staff want to punish you, they will tell you.

[TheWanderer]

Eventually I was going to see and do everything possible and that would have been the end anyway.

So best of luck and I hope this gives you some insight into the explorer mentality and whether or not that's what you wish to attract in the future. No hard feelings. I had a great time.

Exploration is an aspect of the game, but Armageddon is devoted to a shared storytelling experience. If people are coming here for something beside that, they'll eventually leave - as demonstrated above.

The only players this game will ever successfully retain are those interested in its goal and identity. Resources devoted to other mentalities would be wasted.