Game Feedback Wanted

[roobee]

Make it easier to find and get involved in plots. I try to make my own too but I'm not good at making them.

[dumbstruck]

I played my first special application for the better part of an ic year looking forward to their first unambiguous brush with what made them a special application only to die less than an hour after that happened in the middle of nowhere with no witnesses. I don't know how to make it better but it really stung and kind of sucked to wait that long with that much anticipation for that end. I just know that the next time I do something like that it will be written to circumvent that sort of big long wait build up.

[SpyGuy]

So I've taken several very long breaks from the game over the years.  Usually it's a combination of burnout and OOC time commitments.  During breaks every once in awhile I will make a character and try out the game again.  It takes getting engaged in the setting on a character for me to get sucked back in and commit time to the game.  I got very lucky coming back in 2020 and tons of stuff just clicked and had a great run, but a few things from around the time of the war left a sour taste in my mouth.  When I took a break recently, I was cautiously optimistic I was wrong and just focused on RL for awhile.  Coming back 6 months later I'm more pessimistic than ever about the future of the game.  A lot of it is due to structural issues as well that either limit playability or my ability to generate stories that are fun for me.

Playing Staff's Vision: As others have commented, there's a lot of people who have issues being rejected on potential plots or activities.  These all are individual cases and of course people should be following documentation.  But I have the impression that some staff, specifically those higher up, do not want to provide any wiggle room. Give more freedom to leadership positions and work with PCs to create guidelines for their roles.  I encourage staff to take feedback from players, look at the roles they want to play, and focus on accommodating fun and supporting what seems to be working. Save the policing for things that seem to be actively harming the game. If a group of PCs are coalescing in a clan, that means something is working. I would love to see them supported rather than forced to fit into some sort of hardline OOC policy.

Story time.  I played a non-sponsored mundane throwaway that had a fantastic lifespan filled with adventure, complete story arcs and character growth. I found interaction and plenty of murder, corruption and betrayal from the minute I first logged in which got me hooked and the depth of their story pulled me through the slow times. I communicated regularly with staff and followed guidelines set out. I regularly organized mini-RPTs for those around me.  Then a RL year into the character a producer responds to a request that my character's role should never have been allowed.

This felt like a giant slap in the face. I fought back with request history of communication with staff and to their credit the producer did walk that statement back.  My role could be grandfathered in but I was specifically told that I shouldn't advertise that any other character could fill that niche moving forward.  I did not expect, ask for or want special treatment. It was a fun and sometimes difficult role that, IMO, added something to the game. Why should anyone else be banned from trying it? That chain of requests still leaves a sour taste in my mouth because it showed me that ultimately anything I try to build with staff could just be torn down because it doesn't fit someone higher up's vision.

I do not want to play your vision.  I want to work with staff to create characters that both fit the docs and have the ability to be something that isn't a cookie cutter archetype.  The more I see or hear about staff basically saying 'No, not like that' the less I care to engage with the game because it's no longer a collaborative story. My alternative is to just not play.

Interaction:  The #1 thing to keep me playing when I dip my toes in the water again is if I can find interesting interaction in the game.  I'm usually pretty lucky with it but so much of the game is segmented nowadays that I'm worried it's going to be harder and harder.  This is a structural problem when the playerbase is shrinking and won't help promote growth.

If you're playing to the docs the PC population is divided by regional rivalries, racism, hatred of magickers and social strata. Sure, people can interact between these different groups but if you're trying to play strictly to the docs you most likely won't be close to any of them. Honestly for awhile there playing a mundane, common human PC was a lonely existence.

This problem is intensified by making Luir's a much less viable location to play in.  Luir's is a crossroads where these different groups can interact under the motto 'everyone's coin is welcome if they follow the law'. Red Storm is not a great substitute because of the distance from the north, harsh conditions around it and the fact that the culture there is often played to be don't talk to anyone.

The War: I'm not sure if this has been discussed much publicly.  Since it's all very IC sensitive I'll try to be vague. At the time I was clanned but received almost no guidance from staff on how to handle it. Since my PC had little to no authority and no orders that meant a lot of it felt like characters were just going along with what staff had already decided would happen. The initial occupation of Luir's was pretty well done.  Then it stagnated.  It makes little to no sense why Allanak did not capture the Tuluki fort and that would have been a fantastic midpoint RPT. The finale sounds like it was fun.  The aftermath in Luir's felt like a cleanup job of staff goals and not something motivated by IC events.  The apartments in Luir's were already thoroughly looted and occupied, if anything the most realistic thing would have been soldiers looting the market. I don't think it was badly done overall but I also don't feel like it was driven by player agency.  X, Y and Z were going to happen no matter what the players did.

Reopening Tuluk: It's my strong opinion that this was done in a way that hurts the game. Staff have recently talked about how changes don't need to be permanent, that things will be reassessed over time. I don't buy that when it comes to Tuluk, it's a large, very well-done area that will be near impossible to close again without damaging the playerbase more. A more limited expansion of Morin's into a livable center of play would have been less disruptive and would have more IC reasons to interact with the wider gameworld than a xenophobic city state that survived on its own for a King's Age. It would have required fewer sponsored roles to do it well, too. Tuluk, as it is currently designed, sucks up players from the wider gameworld and isolates them. This exacerbates the problem I touch on above, regarding regional, racial and superstitious divisions that encourage the playerbase to NOT interact rather than push them together. Conflict always arises from interactions and is best when it happens due to organic differences in goals. This requires the PCs to have a reason to interact and not to just exist happily in their bubble while excluding the other.

TL;DR:  Respect player agency and work to design clans and roles that a variety of player visions can fit into. Fostering interaction both friendly and hostile should be the goal in any major changes.

[Fredd]

I doubt you will ever lose me forever. This is my comfort game. Even my partner pointed out recently that I'm happier when I play Arm. But I do take breaks between characters.

What are some of the causes that have made you play less or not at all?

1: I've done most of my bucket list.  So i tend to play a few concepts that interest me, then take a break.

2: New Mages just don't feel right. By making them subguilds instead of mainguilds that need subguilds to mask, you took away the feel of them. A Fighter/rukkian doesn't feel much different from a fighter/none. Except that Allanak will slap a gem on me.

What are some changes you think would benefit the game and draw more people - new and returning?

1: Expanding awareness that Muds exist./game advertising

2: Mage MainGuilds. Keep the subs ofc. But make some true mages. I promise you, they will feel different.  (the magic system is one of the things that kept me here for years.)

3: Karma Should be One and None. A player has shown they understand the game, the rules, and the lore, or they are still learning. Once you have Karma, you can app anything that seems fun. The looks I get when i tell people that in 2 years they too, might be allowed to app a half giant. (which is funny, because I'm not even allowed to app one, unless it's a special app)

4: Some way to streamline character creation. Is there TRULY a need to have some poor staff handle every single character app? Cant we automate this so new players don't have to wait 24 hours to play? (maybe put a 'cool off' timer of 24 hours after a death though)


What sort of things should we do more of?

1: Mud awareness/advertising

2: Update the website/help files

3: Worldwide rpt's similar to the copper wars. Where all political parties have an interest in aquiring something. These should be long plots.

4: This kind of stuff. I can't tell you how frustrating the FOIC bs was when all you wanted to know was how to branch your damn burglar. Now staff actually tell us how the code works, and it makes life so much better.

What should we do less of:

1:Focusing on bringing back old players. Focus on finding new ones. The old ones will come back if they see a thriving game. If not, who cares? Not us, we'll have a thriving game.

[The Lonely Hunter]

I think that the biggest things that I would like to see is the return of the 8 karma system and the rising of the glass ceiling. I think that it should take a long time and that we need to be careful about who gets into the spots but letting players obtain "higher levels" would be cool.

A donation pool where players could anonymously donate and have the funds used towards advertisement might be neat!

[Fredd]

I think that the biggest things that I would like to see is the return of the 8 karma system and the rising of the glass ceiling. I think that it should take a long time and that we need to be careful about who gets into the spots but letting players obtain "higher levels" would be cool.

A donation pool where players could anonymously donate and have the funds used towards advertisement might be neat!

I don't like the 8 karma system because it needlessly gate keeps. Staff have notes on all our accounts. They don't need  a number next to it to know if someone is trustworthy. Hell, you don't even need Karma for the most OP roles in the game, Nobles and Templars.

Staff don't need karma to keep track of how many psychics, and sorc's are in the game, they don't need it to slow rerolls, the new subguild none shows that with it's 'uninteded feature', And they don't need it to tell them how much to trust a player, because they have notes.

Getting Karma is a rather dumb process. I put in an app, wait a month, and get told no, because I just came off a break. Nevermind I have taught hundreds of new players over those years, play leaders, make plots, never kill without a reason. Or that I get sponsored roles.  But for some reason, every time I've ever asked to go above 1 Karma, it's shot the fuck down. In fact, the Karma process is why my avatar is a soot crushing itself. Because that's more or less the Karma system in my eyes.

So for all the reasons we all know the Karma system is fricked, I suggest the one and None route. So players can actually play the things they want in the game. I would much rather be told "Hey you just came off a break, make a mundane before you roll that Drovian." then "We wont give you the karma required to special app anything you actually want to play, for this reason that's going to feel pretty arbitrary to you, even if it is important to us."

Also yes, donations for Advertising would be amazing.

[Delirium]

I love the roleplay I find in this game. I love the characters, I love the stories. I love the setting. I love the rich history.

I haven't had the heart to play for months now, even though I really want to.

I'm sitting here trying to think of why that is, and it ends up boiling down to miscommunication issues with staff, request tool overwhelm for both staff and player, and both sides assuming the worst of each other during interactions. Refusals by staff to meet in the middle or accommodate because of red tape or "unfairness" even if I'm willing to sacrifice a ton just to adjust something for a character's story.

It boils down to how slow things move in staff land versus how fast things move in player-land, and the amount of damage that can be done before staff is willing to step in-- after they've crossed their t's and dotted their i's and filled out their forms in triplicate, the problem has been running rampage for 8, 9 months, and it was just one of the problems.

I flat-out admitted that I am not blameless-- I got frustrated and word vomited because I felt misunderstood and/or like the real issue wasn't being addressed-- and promised to work on that, then was not met with reciprocal behavior. That led to one-sided, abusive-feeling interactions. I'd try to fix the communication gap and it would only seem to get worse.

Actively submitting things to try and improve areas of the game after getting approval to submit those things-- then having someone unrelated to the project step in and criticize it without any nod to all the hard work I'd put in, and having someone else try to take the entire project from me mid-project-- I GET THAT IT WAS WELL INTENTIONED. I REALLY DO. ALL CAPS SO THAT THIS PART IS ACTUALLY READ AND NOT SKIMMED OVER. I do understand they were trying to help. But the delivery was atrocious and when I diplomatically pointed that out, I got treated like a pariah. Rather than recognition that they'd put a bullet through my motivation.

It boils down to not being believed when I see problems arising and bring them up, and then feeling like I'm being shot as the messenger, even though I see it affecting others as well, and it feels unjust to try and be as fair as possible by saying hey, I get it, we all feel overwhelmed, and I have x and y issues, so I get that this is stressful-- and then have that used as an excuse to literally blame me for the breakdowns in communication and be told I should "stop playing for my mental health."

Guess what -- I was already planning on that, but because of the way I was being treated, and because of the constant confusion over how best to communicate and because I was literally called a bad roleplayer for doing exactly what my character should and would have done based on everything they had experienced and were presented with.

It boils down to staff not realizing that players get just as overwhelmed and it's not fair to ask them to shrug off things that they have no control over but that have huge impacts (possibly permanent) on their character, while staff gets to sit up in the clouds and deliberate with no risk to themselves. We're expected to shoulder the risks and the burden of pushing plots, and it's a lot of fun when staff has our back (OOC, even if there's challenges IC), but it's horribly unfun when it feels like they're just shitting on your plot for the sake of adding difficulty or danger rather than helping you run a cohesive story.

It boils down to required reports and then being yelled at for how I do those required reports. Constructive criticism was given at times and that helps, but in short: I spend hours writing those fucking things, and most of that time is me trying to condense and edit everything that has happened in the shitstorm, because I have no idea what staff saw and didn't. If I don't put in details, then important things get overlooked and awkward breaches in continuity arise. If I do, I get complained at.

The best way forward I see to play this game is to not play any sort of role where I'm required to interact with staff, but I am still feeling so hurt, demoralized, and like I'm viewed as and treated as a problem player simply for standing up for myself...

... that I still can't seem to summon the will to play. Because I don't want to subject myself to what feels like literal abuse. The most fun I had in recent memory was with a character with whom I had complete freedom over their narrative and choices, and I suspect that is the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy the game, if I can ever summon the desire to return.

As someone who's loved this game for over 20 years, I really hope you'll understand that this comes from a place of pleading with you all to have more empathy toward your players and recognize that the game is an ecosystem, and right now it is not a healthy one. Staff has all the power in their interactions and they NEED to be cognizant of that when deciding how to approach a situation or a response, especially if it is with a demoralized or frustrated or overwhelmed player who wants literally nothing but to add to and improve on the gameworld and enrich it for other players, not just themselves. It's so easy to destroy but it's so hard to build.

There have also been many inexplicable-feeling decisions that take power away from players to tell their own stories (see Spyguy's post, and I still don't understand the Garrison changes -- just curtail the Council's power and keep the Garrison, it was an amazing clan that is now for all purposes destroyed).

Players LOVED Morin's and tried for so many years to build things and expand there, but instead we got Tuluk (which is beautiful, but silo's the game) and a great central base area (Luir's) removed as an option to base out of, which makes it far harder to counteract that silo effect that Tuluk had. You can't FORCE players into areas. Leave options open.

LISTEN to your players, and look for ways to reduce the red tape ya'll wrap yourselves in.

I don't know when I'll be back. I keep wanting to try but I also keep feeling like I'm calling up that abusive ex for a fling.



edited for typos and clarification.

[Halcyon]

I think that the biggest things that I would like to see is the return of the 8 karma system and the rising of the glass ceiling. I think that it should take a long time and that we need to be careful about who gets into the spots but letting players obtain "higher levels" would be cool.

A donation pool where players could anonymously donate and have the funds used towards advertisement might be neat!

Do you feel that player complaints are not an effective method of dealing with problem high karma players, as opposed to additional time gating?

[Delirium]

I think that the biggest things that I would like to see is the return of the 8 karma system and the rising of the glass ceiling. I think that it should take a long time and that we need to be careful about who gets into the spots but letting players obtain "higher levels" would be cool.

A donation pool where players could anonymously donate and have the funds used towards advertisement might be neat!

Do you feel that player complaints are not an effective method of dealing with problem high karma players, as opposed to additional time gating?

Complaints tend to take a while to resolve and come up with a solution if it's deemed warranted. Meanwhile the issue continues unchecked. This can cause serious damage to the game's ongoing plots and the willingness of players to log in if the offending character is difficult for other players to avoid. Migrating to another area of the game isn't always a viable option.

[Lotion]

I think that the biggest things that I would like to see is the return of the 8 karma system and the rising of the glass ceiling. I think that it should take a long time and that we need to be careful about who gets into the spots but letting players obtain "higher levels" would be cool.

A donation pool where players could anonymously donate and have the funds used towards advertisement might be neat!

Do you feel that player complaints are not an effective method of dealing with problem high karma players, as opposed to additional time gating?

Player complaints are not a sufficiently effective method of dealing with problem players. What does time gating have to do with this?

[Armaddict]

Player complaints are not a sufficiently effective method of dealing with problem players. What does time gating have to do with this?

Player complaints will never be effective in the way that most people think of it.  Most people think of it as a prompt for disciplinary action.  What it should be viewed as from the player standpoint is 'direct your attention here'.  In no way shape or form should there be the expectation of disciplinary action.  This likely sounds counterintuitive to some, but there's reasoning behind this.

First off, two disclaimers:  I know that there are the occasional all-out abuses of the game world or game code, or instances of griefing.  I will, of course, stand by my everpresent opinion that we have a fantastic playerbase that is worlds above competition in quality of play and desire for the best roleplaying experience they can get.  I do not believe these instances are common, but they should, of course, prompt some sort of action.  Second, I am kind of speaking into the air here, since this has to generalize the player complaint process; I can't speak to how every player uses it, if at all, or what their expectations are.  I can only speak to how I see it spoken of from time to time.

Armageddon is filled with many different kinds of players, which we've spoken of at length over the decades, i.e. Tropes, explorer vs socialite, etc.  This enriches the game far more than it detracts from it.  It also facilitates different types of players being able to get things done outside of their general 'realm of expertise' or comfort zone via interaction and cooperation.  Armageddon as a game should never fight against this; the players who fill up their playtime hacking with bone swords contribute to the stories of each individual character just as much as the good go-getters, the explorers, the social players, and vice versa.

However, these different playstyles will often come to non-intersections in methodology or understanding or viewpoints of the game.  This becomes particularly poignant in any scenario of competition, antagonism, or even sudden close proximity to another player type; someone with less hesitation to engage in direct murder with another player will often jump to said solution, even if it's a pre-emptive strike, where other player types might often hesitate or consider that...well...poor play.  However, these are all part of being in an inclusive playerbase that focuses on people's drive to roleplay well, rather than people just play 'just like me'.  It keeps the game world alive, it keeps it unpredictable, and it creates all sorts of movers and shakers in all arenas of play.

Player complaints seem to come about more often when these different types of player rub elbows in different scenarios.  'This thing that happened.  Unacceptable, I don't see why this is a thing.'  But it in no way reflects on that other player in any way other than having a different roleplaying ethos.  Instead of viewing it as 'This was bad, make sure this doesn't happen again', player complaints really need to be viewed more as a 'Can this be checked out?', and not only that, but it needs to also basically leave your mind afterwards.  Don't wait to find out if that person was indeed griefing.  Don't wait to say 'Damn right, that was piss poor play.'  When a player complaint goes in, it needs to be in a mindset that you may have just been put into a bad circumstance to observe something that looked or felt bad to you, but the other player is actually doing fine.

Again, I can't speak directly to how people mean their statements; it could just be an issue of how I read the statements about it.  But I can say that if you view the process as 'an ineffective way of dealing with problem players', it may be less about the process itself, and more about what each individual player thinks constitutes a 'problem player' in the first place.

[mansa]

The Player Complaint policy was recently rewritten to be more clear with it's intent and purpose.  I suggest everyone reread it.

https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Staff%20Complaint

[Armaddict]

The Player Complaint policy was recently rewritten to be more clear with it's intent and purpose.  I suggest everyone reread it.

https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Staff%20Complaint

That's about staff complaints.  I thought we were talking about players complaining about other players.

[Riev]

They rewrote Player complaint so much that its no longer available.

[Halcyon]

[/quote]
Player complaints are not a sufficiently effective method of dealing with problem players. What does time gating have to do with this?
[/quote]

Then fix the feedback method for resolving problems.   

Relying on staff time and attention to push effectively just costs the game frustrated players.   If a player is unacceptable, deal with that.

[Halaster]

I believe after about 8 months, this thread has run its course.