Feedback on playing and log-ins

[Shabago]

Opening a discussion here, for players to weigh in on, on why they aren't playing. Obviously, RL trumps everything and the entire team always tells people to focus on that before playing. The hurricane, the war, school time of year, continued transition for some from work at home to the office again, and so on. However, there will always be other issues at play that keep you all from logging in, and I would be rather remiss to not open this sort of discussion to hear what those are.

A present feeling of stagnation?
A feeling of not enough for your player to accomplish/glass ceiling?
Karma gating?
Shabago's a big jerk?

List your game related reasons if you could, please. Keep in mind the usual year time frame for recent events and aim to be vague enough to not cause issues for others/on-going stories, but otherwise have it.

[Derain]

Stagnation , I think this could be fixed by the right sponsored person given the permission to "start shit"

Karma cool down I think should be just a cool down on mages, let us have the races and sub guilds.

[mansa]

As a reference:

There seems to be a seasonal lull period for the "back to school" time.


For me, I'm trying to figure out some answer to these questions:

What change has happened in the world? 
What is different than the last time I played?
Is there a role in the world that I think is missing and I can fill it?
Is there a roleplaying trope I haven't tried to play out?
Is there a particular characterization or fantasy I wanted to explore?
What's something fun I can do with my spare time, within this world?




I feel as though the game can benefit from telling more stories of "What has happened last week?" and "How can I join in on existing storylines?".  It is always tough making a new character in a new city, and you don't know:
a) Who the character leaders are
b) Which clans are hiring
c) What I can do when I join those specific clans
d) What timezones do those players typically play
...Perhaps that could help.


As for the original questions:
I don't know the answers.  Shabago is a jerk.

[Riev]

At times, playing feels less like play and more like work. When a chunk of the time you can dedicate to the game is taken up with explaining why you didn't play one day... it becomes an expectation. It can be hard to carry the expectations of others, and still enjoy the game for your own reasons.

For every 24hrs played, I feel like I only get about half an hour of 'fun, interactive, social scenes' and the rest is spent idling, solo play, or trying to find people who want to play with you.

Even if you can somehow get 1-2 other people involved in a plotline, the scheduling that has to take place is obnoxious to say the least. You can get everyone together, but if you need staff, it takes minimum 2weeks to schedule. As I've said before, time for Players/PCs changes in seconds and minutes. For staff it changes is weeks and months. We HAVE to find a way to get them closer.

Time constraints. Can't play as much from work as I used to until the season calms down.

Some people say they "always get support" and "always find people in <sphere of play>" but when I'm there, I simply do not find the same opportunities. Possibly playtimes, possibly because there's some fundamental I don't understand, but it feels like I am not playing the same game as some other people.

[Derain]

I get the same feeling as Riev, and sometimes it also gets the feeling that some people are just bored so they look for arbitrary reasons to turn your game into a chore.. Some folks forget this is a game sometimes.. Also I think people concept of coin and worth needs fixed recently, demands of 5000 coins a year for whatever protection etc is insane for some character concepts without an insane amount of spam grebbing or crafting a ton of random junk to pawn.

[valeria]

I'm not playing right now because of external factors.

However, one of the things that made it hard for me to play and led to me ultimately taking a long break this last time was difficultly coordinating with the people I needed to coordinate with because of my restricted playtimes.  Add to that the pressure of having time-sensitive big plot stuff going on?  That was hands down my most frustrating experience I've ever had in this game.

Give me some way to reliably leave messages for people, and for them to leave messages for me, and I'd be back even if I could only play a couple hours every other Saturday or something.

[Dracul]

I'm hoping it's a low. I just took a break again and came back myself. I tend to binge play and then disappear...not on purpose...it's just how my focus is.

This last winter/spring I thought there was a lot going on! Very cool stuff. Rooms/areas added, buildings built, player clans flourishing (and then even being destroyed by other pcs. sad, but still). The kind of stuff that I honestly I have not gotten involved a lot in and it was great. I'm a little surprised to see that the game is (a little) quiet (but still dangerous) (...).


My suggestion would be ...more ooc transparency. Not everyone feels the same, so there could be some nuance or OOC warnings, but my absence as a player of characters from the gameworld does not virtually remove my character...so access to more updated/information to include in their story when you log back in would be great.

Similar to what mansa suggested. I like the rumor board archives, I would love to see more of it, some IC/some OOC.

[Tranquil]

For me, it's definitely the stagnation, and the very low pop as of late has not helped.

It's hard to describe the stagnation, but, it certainly feels as if everyone from low commoners to leaders and to staff are simply trying to uphold a sense of peace and status quo over everything. Trying to start plots is difficult on your own as a leader, and you require Staff to throw stuff into the mix to make it feel supported and unique. Everyone can do a plot like 'build a road' but it will always be simply 'build a road' unless the clan staffer takes it into their own hands to make it more interesting. Like, let's say, hitting an underground tunnel with spooky thingies during the building of said road.

However this doesn't really happen very often at all. I've played a selection of leaders and I can count on one hand the amount of times plots were actively engaged in staff-side beyond the simple "well I guess I have to edit that room desc now huh".

This isn't meant to be a diss or anything, but I do think staff attitudes should change from the realistic and status quo to being the Dungeon Masters that make the D&D game less about travelling from one town to the the next where the only unique thing is how you had a decent ale, to one where travelling from own town to the next leads to an actual engaging adventure.

It seemed to be like this in the past, as anyone reading the history of game events could see. All the wild stories and wild characters and wild plots and world plots. No idea what happened but, it's far far rarer to see something of old magnitude happen these days.

This would be a good way to help fix the current stagnation, IMO. Player leaders can't really do too much about it. Armageddon relies heavily on staff plots and staff involvement. The game will simply be flat if everything in the world is solely influenced by Players who have no ability to animate the many forces and the very nature of Zalanthas.

[Barsook]

It's the stagnation and difficulty to coordinate at times just like many have said, but mainly stagnation for me. It feels like it happens after I play a fairly long-longed PC's in this stint and the last stint before I took a year and half break. I think the attempts by the staff were good and they need to keep happening. We, as players, just need to accept that there will be railroading to some degree but at the same time, the staff should be ready to go another direction if the plot derails.

[Iiyola]

Too many clans that are outside cities, which makes the player base spread out, and therefore they only have a small group to play with. This eventually allows for stagnation in RP, and people are inclined to just log off as subjects run out, eventually.

I feel if more players are gathered in one spot, more roleplay can be promoted.

Also the lack of a "living" environment. I'd love for NPC's to interact more with PC's, if only for "atmosphere" or setting the tone.

I also would like to see more open storylines, which don't play behind closed doors. Things where your average Zalanthian Joe can be part of. And it doesn't always have to involve murder.

[creeper386]

One of the things that I see tends to be as a community we have too much of a reliance on leader roles. If someone dies, stores or has RL issues that takes them from a leader position, that area of the game almost always suffers.


Certainly some better communication around these times would be nice. A post to clan boards or something to at least alert people to an absence and perhaps allow other characters to step up. Instead now it's always just this empty void and no one knows what is going on. This is particularly bad in my opinion for the Byn, where we often funnel newer players into and then the Byn collapses around a missing Sergeant and makes the whole MUD look dead.


Other things are fairly small but often just make me not want to be a part of the community. The whole Tek religion in Allanak and often being forced to participate is something that as someone who is extremely non-religious, is right up there with anything else that requires consent. I honestly can't care less about Tek worship of some kind, though I think things like Morning Devotions just flies in the face of "no religion" but it's the fact that way too often someone comes along and tries to make it a big thing and very much targets PCs to be a part of it. It's just annoying and gross, and getting to the point I don't want to play in Allanak, which certainly cuts down on places to play where there are actually other players around.

When playing an androgynous character, how often people chose to gender my character no matter what. Or continuously try and figure out what gender my character might be. It's never fun. And seems to be worse if my character has personality traits that could be considered more feminine.

[Barsook]

Too many clans that are outside cities, which makes the player base spread out, and therefore they only have a small group to play with. This eventually allows for stagnation in RP, and people are inclined to just log off as subjects run out, eventually.

I feel if more players are gathered in one spot, more roleplay can be promoted.

Agreed on the fact that the gameword is too large for the playerbase, but you have the same issue if there barely any choices. Which I think just goes back to the lack of the staff being true storytellers and/or not really having seasons where each season focuses on an arc of a few world changing plots. Like whatever happened to the Luir's/Kurac plot? That was replaced by the re-opening of the Tuluki Gates which is getting stale now (to me at least). Maybe it's time to more to something new or go back to the Luir's plot.

[MeTekillot]

I often don't feel like the time I put into the game has any lasting effect on the game or other players. As well, I find the skill grind torturously monotonous. Paired with that monotony is the additional monotony of playing a relatively useless character for the fortieth or fiftieth time.

Completing the triad of monotony is the monotony of stagnation. The same plots with the same nobles houses and the same cities. The same big bads and the same OOC and IC culture. The same plots played out over and over.

I eventually get to a point of "what's the point". I've been playing this game for over ten years so I stick around for the community, but I find myself spending more time shooting shit in the OOC channels than I do playing the game, because it no longer feels like playing. It feels like working and grinding.

[Nao]

I don't like the dominance of heavy combat PCs right now. They're overpowered, they're already the most popular classes at chargen, they have a tendency to live forever, and the recent code changes encourage players to make even more of them - not less. They've also recently become even harder to kill.
Other classes become irrelevant as anything other than support cast for certain supplies, or when you need something crafted.

[LindseyBalboa]

I don't have time to spend waiting hours in hopes someone else logs in to rp, now that I can't play at work and half-idle til something happens or I have time to make something happen. That was a luxury for sure. Also, my schedule changed, so by the time I'm home it's pretty late, and I'm tired. I want to log in and jump into RP with the scant amount of time I have, not idle around.

I'm finally at a point where honestly we really need some way to communicate with offline characters. I feel like I wasted time logging in when I need to contact a few people and they're not around and it's just me; whereas if I could "leave a message" I could do that and then focus on getting up to something instead of focusing on spending days trying to forward a single message. I'm very task oriented; I don't want to feel like I spent two hours wasting time, when I could feel like I accomplished that goal and also spent the rest of my time doing something. It's a game, not a chore. I'm trying to set up consistent playtimes to solve this but I'm not sure how effective it'll be.

I've been staunchly against it because of the idea of using PCs to communicate but that's not realistic at this point. I think it would open up a lot of playability and help plots move forward instead of stagnate until someone dies. We're playing a game without a pause button but everyone from staff, to the hardcore gamer, to the most casual of roleplayers, seems to have a lot going on right now.

tl;dr don't have much free time and when I do log in a lot of times I spend an hour or two alone. hard to move plots forward.

[Doublepalli]

Put a time limit on storing PC's.

Too many make a sponsored and then store, leaving the game world empty.

[Nao]

Put a time limit on storing PC's.

Too many make a sponsored and then store, leaving the game world empty.

Not giving them to players who already have a history of taking a sponsored role, then never playing the PC would be a nice start.

[MeTekillot]

I don't like the dominance of heavy combat PCs right now. They're overpowered, they're already the most popular classes at chargen, they have a tendency to live forever, and the recent code changes encourage players to make even more of them - not less. They've also recently become even harder to kill.
Other classes become irrelevant as anything other than support cast for certain supplies, or when you need something crafted.

I'm inclined to agree with you here even though I personally play almost nothing but PCs geared for violent conflict. I think non-combat PCs should have access to the coded influence of combat ability through the use of NPC bodyguards and thugs. What's your opinion on that?

[Nao]

I don't like the dominance of heavy combat PCs right now. They're overpowered, they're already the most popular classes at chargen, they have a tendency to live forever, and the recent code changes encourage players to make even more of them - not less. They've also recently become even harder to kill.
Other classes become irrelevant as anything other than support cast for certain supplies, or when you need something crafted.

I'm inclined to agree with you here even though I personally play almost nothing but PCs geared for violent conflict. I think non-combat PCs should have access to the coded influence of combat ability through the use of NPC bodyguards and thugs. What's your opinion on that?

I think that's a pretty unrelated proposal. I wouldn't be opposed to it, but NPCs will not change the situation much. Most PCs are not powerful enough to have access to them, NPCs are codedly pretty weak for the most part (although that could be changed, I suppose), and at least in their clan compounds, these powerful PCs are already well-protected.

I personally play almost nothing but PCs geared for violent conflict.

Does that translate to 'almost nothing but heavy combat'?
Light combat classes 'should' be geared for violent conflict, too, though maybe with a bit more tricks and less so in a straight fight. But the difference to even light combat is absurdly high. They're toothless in comparison even with a large difference in time played.

[Ammut]

Sometimes it does feel like the game can get stagnant.  I find the most enjoyable times of the game are with staff driven plots that open up the world for collaboration and give the feeling that a player is part of something bigger than themselves.  The Copper Wars, occupation of Luir's, Allanak's assault on Tuluk, and so on are good examples of this.  While events like a new moon's ascension, a comet, and a flaming roc in the sky are excellent world flavoring events, they can be quickly forgotten after a week IRL.

It would be neat to see something like an announcement of a year long plotline separated into four quarters.  It could be something like:

• A skimmer arrives on the shores of the Silt Sea carrying people who speak an unknown language from a far away land
• Barbarian hordes from the unknown lands begin to show themselves all throughout Vrun Driath and begin raiding/burning farming villages
• Red Storm is overtaken and by the barbarians as they take a foothold in the Known
• A final assault on Red Storm by Allanak's forces (possibly with the assistance of Kurac and other GMH's?) to beat back the invaders

This would give people an idea of what is going in the game world and how they could find more interaction within it.  It hopefully would also drive people to log in more often so they can be part of these stories/themes.  The NPC barbarians could simply never respawn in the final 90 days, giving a feeling of accomplishment for those who engage in the final struggle to free Red Storm.  Once the plot is finished, it also opens the door for rebuilding Red Storm, a Tuluki power imbalance, and so on.

Basically what I'm saying is that sometimes the game feels a bit directionless.  Some people like that.  I'd prefer to have it guided for me as a player.

[Barsook]

Basically what I'm saying is that sometimes the game feels a bit directionless.  Some people like that.  I'd prefer to have it guided for me as a player.

[Bebop]

The pace of the game is super off and it's creating a playability as the real world we live in speeds up and the player base ages.

In my twenties I'd sit around playing ALL day, I'd even play at work.  Thirty something me isn't down for that.

While plots can happen at the speed of light, the code is still relentlessly slow.  I craft something.  I just sit there for RL minutes waiting to either fail or succeed.  What other gaming experience has that much dead air?  If I want to max out a character and play at a reasonable, healthy pace (a couple hours each day, and focus on RP) it could take me a real life year or more.  Meanwhile, I can log on to almost any other video game and beat the entire thing and replay it in one real life month.

It feels tedious.  Cap that with permadeath, the idea of doing all of that work and getting killed randomly is just maddening and there isn't a feeling of reward.  It's been scientifically proven that what keeps people playing is a sense of reward.

There's a lot of tedium in Armageddon both codedly and roleplay wise.  If I'm playing a mundane, I log on and have to go out and incur risk just to level.  I end up doing the same tasks again and again.  If I'm a magicker, I cast the same spell again and again in a blind hope that maybe after one real life month something might have branched or level?  Magickers start off incredibly, laughably weak.  It isn't very fun to roleplay, combined with isolation and exclusion from other roleplay scenarios.  As a magicker I'd tear into the game and start shaking things up but I ... can't... because I'm not strong enough for months and there's every likelihood that in that time a snake will bite me and my cure won't work and there went five months of work.

Then when it comes to leadership you end up stuck in meetings walk a fine line of being able to interact with other PCs and not make them feel overwhelmed by the power imbalance.

The tedium needs to be fixed and I think we need to accept that we're in a faster world with an older player base who can't play every waking moment.  We've got kids, spouses, pets and jobs.

I also think the current character availability needs a major overhaul.  I like that we have a lot more options but I think so many of the combinations are restrictive and just really don't work.  Certain skills are heavily gatekept.  I could make a whole thread about that alone.  But... I don't have time!

On top of that, due to coded changes common watering holes are either completely inaccessible to a portion of the base and/or completely unsafe.  It's made it so that people don't really tavern sit in many places.  And the social restrictions break up playability.

I guess overall, I'd say there are a lot of playability issues that just don't encourage players crossing paths and interacting in a way that 1) feels organic, 2) doesn't require staff intervention 3) happens on a regular basis.

There's also the very simple fact that many of us are CONSTANTLY either in front of a phone, TV or computer.  I don't want to live myself constantly plugged in so I can only handle a few hours of the game a night.

Another thing I've noticed is that when some players do create drama and plots they're quickly targeted and snuffed out.  Maybe it's because people are over eager to accomplish something but again not to over use playability as my keyword here but what incentivizes players to not just build things but actually shake things up?  What incentivizes players to log on?  Right now it's just the hope of one day maybe having a powerful careful or something happening but that could take real life weeks or months.

I'm thirty six now, I've got to level up in real life.  I can't spend hours and hours sitting around typing craft bone or kill tregil.

IDK that's just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

Instead of making things more playable we're doing things like making it so cures don't work and we can't ride a mount with a two handed weapon.  It's easier to die and just as hard to level.

[Crimson]

I am back after several months break. Parts of the place I liked and continue to like. However, something continued to happen: plots started and those players either melted away or character died. So many things started and never ended.

That followed some pretty awful things that happened to a previous character in game and instead of having certain general questions answered I was basically given some rather nasty replies. Then I played a character and really not much but boredom happened.

Something about the constant permadeath or players who dont follow up for whatever reason were slowly bleeding away reasons to log in. So I stopped logging in. I just started once again to see if there is anything here again.

[Greve]

There's just not enough entertainment in the game for the time required to be sufficiently "in it" to get involved in anything. Not enough happens. Not enough payback for the time I put in; and not enough integral game story to inspire plots that feel like they happen for real reasons, as opposed to happening because I (or someone else) was bored. If I want to start a plot myself, I have to drag people kicking and screaming into it because everything moves at a snail's pace. If I want to get involved in someone else's plot, weeks and months go by without any sign of those. When one finally does crop up, 75% of the time, the character that served as its genesis gets PKed before it can get going properly and then it just peters out. Too much time spent bored with no way into anything and no events transpiring that give me a reason to start something of my own. Simply put, it's dull. Nothing that happens would have warranted a passing note in any mediocre novel or film.

It has become a very boring game where nothing of any consequence happens for long stretches of time, so I gave up on it.

[Lotion]

The time cost of taking a freshly generated character into a fully "playable" character is higher than it should be. A well established character allows players to log in and then just play a little bit. A fresh character has to worry about so many bad things that could happen to them.

The lack of rentable save rooms in Luir's Outpost has a huge negative effect on the game. I fondly remember the times when the Shanty Town existed. The way those apartments were setup was such a boon for player interaction. Smaller locked save rooms adjacent to npc guarded larger save rooms was such an interesting dynamic. Something similar exists in the RSV Silo with that infinite fire room by the entrance.

I've heard someone say nobody's logging in because they're waiting on requests.

Waiting is often a bane of enjoyment in this game. A big part of why I almost exclusively play wilderness characters is because even if it becomes a single player game most of the time I can always find something to do and you also have lots of interesting random encounters in the wilderness
Examples of bad waiting:
* Waiting for non-life-threatening poison to end
* Waiting for the PC you need to way to be wayable
* * join a clan
* * buy something
* * etc.
* Waiting for mount stamina regen in the wilderness
* Waiting for stamina regen in the wilderness

Certainly sometimes something very interesting can happen during some of these, but that one interesting thing happening does not justify all of the other very boring waiting.