Descent into Hack & Slash?

[Tranquil]

This is going to be a little passionate, and very unorganized mini-rant, and is not at all meant to be attack towards individuals. Just my comments on current game trends and how I am dissatisfied with them.
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I've been playing ArmageddonMUD for a long time now. Granted, not as long as some of the veterans on here, but decently long enough to consider myself somewhat experienced with the game. As of the last three months, I've stopped feeling like I'm playing the gritty RP desert game I knew and loved, and more like I'm playing a new knock-off World of Warcraft expansion (without graphics).

There is a large proliferation of players playing karma races, or magick subguilds. I've recently departed from a character because everytime I decided to go out into the wilderness to try anything antagonistic, it's always a mul or a half-giant greeting me. Whilst I could've put in an immense amount of effort gathering poisons or shooting arrows at them like people have suggested, it simply wasn't worth the effort, and it wasn't worth spending all that time to be greeted with the typical 'mount and immediately flee into the void'. Then I was greeted with the recent weapon change that totally gimped the low damage I already did. Antagonism became more of a pointless 'haha' novelty and a passing thing, because I knew I couldn't actually do anything against these types of characters, due to how broken the combat system is - and is only showing itself to be more broken with all these massively high-strength characters around. So, I stored in frustration.

The roleplay has also been heavily lacking, and it seems the bulk of people care less for intricate scenes and plotlines, and more for blind and blunt 'kill man', preferably in a stack of buffed-up PCs. Maybe I'm just an elitist, maybe I just got a bad luck on the draw, but half the players I've seen as of late have not even been using basic English grammar, let alone an emote.

The recent war looked like a bone that was thrown into the game without any sort of build-up for flavor, events, or anything, only so the staff can point at it and say "look, the players can make their own direction in the game". The only truly notable event that seemed to come of it, was more dissatisfied people getting wiped from the game over a staff directed mistake (albeit, apologized-for staff mistake). I believe the staff had good intentions introducing new things at such a rapid rate, but it has lead to a complete derealization of the setting. Seeing lizard people running around with magickal half-giants and muls feels more like a mockery of the setting instead of the Armageddon I've known for a long time now. To add insult to injury, these new things are again, immensely powerful. There's little time to process lizard people from an IC or OOC way when they are given an NPC army, in addition to their large player count.

There has been alot of change as of late, some good, most bad. The staff have taken alot of suggestions which is a great thing, but I think alot of these implementations were incredibly ham-fisted and has only led to the deterioration of the game and IC world in general. I know someone could easily say "wow, these people are never happy" here. My only advice would be to try and improve the things you already have and are well and truly known for instead of adding new clans and new races willy-nilly.

I'm probably going to be taking a decently long break from ArmageddonMUD, but I wanted to post this not to announce that I'm leaving the game (I'm not that important), but more to air my frustrations and to see if anyone else carries similar thoughts and opinions. In the end, if I am the minority opinion and most others are having fun? Then this game and it's direction probably isn't for me and I'm only just now coming to realize that.

[Iiyola]

Perhaps this could also be mentioned during the upcoming Q&A ( https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58875.0.html ) Did staff anticipate on the significant change and impact these adjustments on weapons/magick/race?

I personally haven't experienced much in general since these adjustments, but I can imagine that, with the Bashurit, which are supposedly superior when it comes to physical prowess, along or in combination with magick, makes any mundane, 0-1 karma race player feel obsolete. Especially when their clan lacks the numbers.

Additionally, its unfortunate that people seem to immediately spamkill their target, instead of some initial "foreplay". It makes the deaths or want to interact in plot less pleasant or downright frustrating.

[tiny rainbow]

I think we need an urgent roll of poisons to the previous state that was working for so many years. Just until all the other issues with combat can be properly looked at.

I'm not going to say it was a total mistake, I think it was well-intentioned to address some specific situations (those people that use poison but then don't capitalise on the roleplay opportunities they can add, but the same problem exists for strength and magic and nothing was addressed for these - poison was actually better in that a lot of the time it encouraged roleplay by not being such an instant death thing, instead of the situation now where people are guided towards playing characters that inflict maximum damage fast, which is of course nearly always entirely lethal).

It affected most elf characters (both city and desert) who relied on it so much. And then that was piled on with a change to weapon damage that made it even more, well, sharp, that the poisons were changed so drastically - changes like that aren't in a vacuum, they have a knock-on effect on so many things, and I don't think it's been for the better.

I really don't want to see people not playing elves because of all these changes (or quitting the game because they feel it's not for them anymore which is how that post sounds), it's already a hard sell to get people brave enough to play them, since most people are not willing to deal with the pressures and explicit antagonism from most other characters because of the natural, and fair (not begrudged) IC culture. When people do play elves, I'm usually happy to see it, because they can be very intriguing characters!

I think the game should probably really start looking at the whole picture when doing stuff like this and stop experimenting with the balance in a live game, and have a proper test server, I know smaller MUDs that do this so the situation just seems bizarre really, even without comparing it to professional game design or anything like that. Just not change things bit by bit, but instead if such drastic changes are wanted, it'd be better to revamp combat entirely, and put it in one go after some testing, instead of this situation where we have tweaks that greatly affect one side of the game, while other characters that were already powerful get an even greater boost?

It does seem a bit jarring that the new faction seems to have ended up in a sort of situation that reminds in a few ways of the bad stories people have posted of the times of the Tan Muark, I was thinking its just like a running joke and we can all laugh about it, and that lessons were learned, but... Maybe not?



edit: I think we should also roll back the karma change and bring back timers, it was a mistake. These characters should not be throwaways, it SHOULD be a big affect when one goes down to make them more memorable, and unique seeming, and for it to have an actual feeling like something has been accomplished instead of just making another giant/mul/magicker off the endless production line - it'd bring more people back to playing normal characters again occasionally!

[Yelinak]

Antagonism is definitely lopsided in favor of those who have one of the few things that make you a real threat, which are:

- High strength, either through HG/mul or a top-roll human/dwarf with bludgeoning
- Master backstab/sap (and they're really only great if you also have high strength)
- Non-mundane powers
- Regular access to high-end poisons

Without one of these things, the only way you can reliably antagonize anyone is if you have the crime code on your side. That's not to say that it's the only possible way to subject someone else to antagonism, but these methods are certainly the only way to realistically get away with antagonism on more than a 'once in a blue moon' basis. You're not utterly incapable of coming out ahead in an altercation if you don't have one of the above, but you can't really have PvP at the core of your character concept and expect good results. Like if you made a mundane human fighter without strength prioritized, and don't have peraine daggers at your disposal and are not in a clan that can simply arrest people, what options do you even have? Are you gonna lightly slash someone to death? Maybe if you can contrive to get them in a locked room, but otherwise, fat fucking chance. Even master ranged skills aren't reliable enough to make do.

It feels like the PvP environment is too reliant on this handful of gotcha mechanics. Conventional combat is largely worthless without them, even if you're very skilled. The weapons update didn't change it that much, although it did nerf the weapons that were overpowered and thus allowed characters without high strength to do meaningful damage. This has made it even more important to have high strength. If you previously had a weapon that did 1d8+2 damage and it has now been correctly nerfed to 1d8 like all other weapons of its kind, that's like going from extremely good to average strength on a human. Or, put another way, it allowed characters without high strength to perform as thought they had. It's a gigantic change for them, even if it was technically appropriate. It has highlighted how awful combat is without high strength or one of the other options listed above. Strength utterly dominates melee combat to an absurd extent.

I think this has, in turn, led to a situation where players feel compelled to approach things in a 'Hack & Slash' manner. Most of the aforementioned tricks require heavy knowledge of and engagement with the code. It's not enough to just have high strength, you also need to raise your skills so that you can leverage the stat. Same with poisons, they're no use if you can't inflict them. Magick needs to be trained up. Backstab and sap likewise, and doubly so if you have to branch them first--and these two skills have also suffered a massive nerf with the weapons update, to the point where I'm not convinced they're even worth it anymore. In any case, heavy codeplay is often the gateway to having a character that can't just be written off as harmless.

It feels a lot like being a schemer and influential character is not enough on its own. At the very least, you need the help of someone who has done the above--unless, of course, you're a templar or a soldier with authority to arrest. And then you're still limited to targets who are in the city (an ever-dwindling flock, it seems) and who you can justify arresting. Nobles seem like they might as well not even exist, having practically no presence or noticeable influence on anything, so political measures are usually futile. You or someone doing your bidding needs to check one of the aforementioned boxes in order to get anything done. You can't Little Finger your way into anything on your own. People will simply detect that you have no tangible clout.

And the easiest source of clout is to make a HG, a mul or a mage. It means you're guaranteed to have a gotcha mechanic. In fact, with one of those, you don't even need to spar for RL months in order to be a potential threat to most people, although it certainly helps if you can also do that. For everyone else, it's an uphill battle. Peraine used to be the great equalizer that allowed anyone to cheese a win against almost anybody, but while that's still technically possible, it has become a lot less practical. And if you don't even have that, there's a prohibitive series of hoops you have to jump through in order to show the world that you're capable. Then you almost have to play a sponsored character and live off of the fact that the documentation says you've got clout, and hope people agree.

That "meta" has a tendency to nudge meaningful roleplay to the side, for various reasons that can be read between the lines. I don't think any of this has cropped up in the last few months, as you insinuate. It has been there for as long as I've played, but the gravity of happenings in the world has generally determined how much players care about being deadly. If there's a wealth of story material to dive into, it's a lot easier to accept being potentially incapable of beating up Amos on a dune. If there isn't, suddenly that feud with Amos is the main thing to care about.

[BadSkeelz]

I've seen no lies thus far in this thread. There's a reason I checked out of Armageddon PVP years ago. It invariably devolves into locked-room ganks, karma-driven deathballs (of various flavors, from desert elves All Tribes All Stars to Hogwarts Hitsquads), or simple crimcode clubbing. And this isn't even getting in to why players pick fights to begin with. I think most of us who engage in it are just in it for the power trips or the adrenaline rush, which frankly I find better served in TTRPGs or fighting games.

I think this is a separate issue from a general infusion of high magick fappery into the game over the last couple years, though of course the potential of magick subguilds have made them enticing  to people dead set on being a general nuisance. Even if you rolled back recent changes that have made the current gameworld what it is, there isn't any better reason for characters to want to fight and PK each other aside from one player thinking they're being cool.

Armageddon's just not a very good PVP game, and people should maybe stop thinking of it as one.

[Dracul]

Sorry you feel frustrated. I hope you can take a break and return as well as avoid the frustration you wrote about.

This is an RPI built on a hack and slash engine. It's always been this way, but gets better and worse from time to time. I hate the combat code in PVP. It's a huge challenge to balance gameplay vs emoting and all leveraged against typing speed and code delays.

I am going to double down and say I believe that extended death scenes would be the biggest improvement we could make to removing the frustrations of the beep. https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58887.0.html or any of the hundred other threads. ANY way to extend a death scene beyond a beep or a your visions goes black...beep...would do far more for player contentment than ANY other code change, tweak, or adjustment.

The IC example brought up (some details should be viable to discuss here as it was posted as a rumor) the confident Tulukis rolled out with some untrained conscript, some half giants, and a templar who (OOC translate to IC?) was unprepared and caught of guard. They were run down and slaughtered by the mutant martial race no one has fought before. Are they worth 2-3 humans? Are the actually stronger than half giants and faster than muls because defilers haven't sucked the life out of them and the land they lived on?
-Why was it an IMM mistake? Did it suck for the players who died? Was it IC? Did they see any emotes, shouts, or imm echos?
-Would it have been better if they got to see a full scene? If that scene was basically the above, but lasted longer.

Half giant's are mimics...they can and will run around with anyone. You mentioned a magick half giant running around with the scary mutants....WHY THE FEKK WOULD YOU SHOOT ARROWS AT THAT? If you were an elf I would go get your whole tribe. I would call to the tribe leaders to get some powerful spirit...

There is magic...wait...you don't just mean a witch you mean a half giant witch? That sounds like a monster. Does that feel more like a twinked out character (what is twinking again?) or a monster that's been growing in the gameworld?

A bigger problem than 'a group of mages' is that a number of them are long lived characters...long lived characters are not easily challenged by newer characters due to how the the skill system works. So the king of the hill can become nearly invincible until something unseats them...it's always been this way...because of that, mostly?

On another side rant I also think there should be less secrets in a psionically linked world...sure, your character can still keep a secret, but why aren't commoners in Red Storm and Luirs swapping rumors? And if more people were able to way their friends as they died or before they died (if their friends were offline) and share that information...well I think that makes more sense.
-Where that comes into play is that the Thryzn have been in game for ...a year? Which means 8 years ingame, which means up to nearly a half of the life of some min age characters. They've been around, in the desert, all over the known interacting with people, and being seen.

The "large player count" also means that a large counting of players are out playing and engaging with them, entertained and roleplaying...which is a huge note too...WHY are there so many players joining a group? WHY do they find it interesting?

There do seem to be a lot of muls and magickers around. Perhaps reinstating the karma timer would make witch hunting more effective?

[Doublepalli]

Lizard people are virtually more superior in combat.

They are not, in fact superior in combat. They can, will, and have been shit on by human, dwarf, elf,  and mul PCs, but that's all I can say. They aren't actually codedly better.

I support rolling poisons back to the way they were, as it did level the playing field against long lived pcs.

The recent tuluk incident was the simple result of being vastly outnumbered, with vastly longer lived pcs. That's all. And they had considerable help per the northern rumours

[WarriorPoet]

First, on a positive note before I start whining, I have been having a blast lately. Maybe my corner of the world caught a knot of awesome roleplayers but yeah. Fun.

Next... I absolutely hate the new karma system. It seems like every pc is a hg, mul, or magicker. I get that people want to play the high karma races and classes because they are dope but if everyone is super special, no one is super special. If muls are a dime a dozen I don't feel nervous around them or thrilled to be involved with such radically dangerous characters and what I know are vetted, high-quality roleplayers. Unlike me.

Poison is trash. I have always hated it and recently it seems to be everywhere. Shit sandwich. I have never enjoyed a poison scene from either end of it. I don't know how to balance coded weakness against this issue but, for me, this ain't it at all.

Lizard folk have been consistently cool for flavor and quality but are obnoxiously and abruptly OP. Kill three quarters of them, hard cap the clan at a low number, get rid of the npcs.

Edited because my fingers are half frozen and typing is hard.

[Dracul]

Lizard folk have been consistently cool for flavor and quality but are obnoxiously and abruptly OP. Kill three quarters of them, hard cap the clan at a low number, get rid of the npcs.

I'm really optimistic about a 'third power' existing within the game world (let alone all the other factions and plots) as it's no longer just Tuluk VS Allanak and they have to be balanced in some manner because otherwise they would be one.

Now they can be unable to overexpose themselves etc etc. They could even pretend to be allies? Yeah...right....wait? what?

[HammerofJericho]

Badskeelz said it above "Arm is not a very good PVP  game and people need to stop thinking it is."

All these issues stated are problems revolving around something being too OP in the kill-or-be-killed world of PCs. Muls, HGs, and mages are awesome flavorwise. They stick out because they tend to kill people (whether defending themselves or being raiders). People then hate it and speak up.  How often do we hear the good things these races and classes have done? As a community,  we love to bring up what we hate and what sucks and why something is wrong. We've asked for a new race for years and finally got one.  Now they're a problem because they guerilla attacked another clan with God knows what happening to push them to do so.

I also don't agree with the karma timer change back. I don't want pcs just hiding until they're mega badasses. I want action and people will play far more freely with no timer. Have hardset limits to each race/role sure. But the time the way it was stunk for esg and race choices at 1 karma.

And the cities do feel very thin in population compared to what rumors say of the desert world. I don't know what killed the urge to play aide types, bards, or criminals but it's been a real thing feeling the lack of those. There are alot of things to speak about for sure in the player/staff meeting.

[LindseyBalboa]

I think we need an urgent roll of poisons to the previous state that was working for so many years. Just until all the other issues with combat can be properly looked at.

I'm not going to say it was a total mistake, I think it was well-intentioned to address some specific situations (those people that use poison but then don't capitalise on the roleplay opportunities they can add, but the same problem exists for strength and magic and nothing was addressed for these - poison was actually better in that a lot of the time it encouraged roleplay by not being such an instant death thing, instead of the situation now where people are guided towards playing characters that inflict maximum damage fast, which is of course nearly always entirely lethal).

It affected most elf characters (both city and desert) who relied on it so much. And then that was piled on with a change to weapon damage that made it even more, well, sharp, that the poisons were changed so drastically - changes like that aren't in a vacuum, they have a knock-on effect on so many things, and I don't think it's been for the better.

Poisons have been effectively removed from the game unless you have access to a PC whose entire concept is poison. Please change it back or keep working on it and remove the brew requirement which was introduced without adding brew to all the classes that relied on making poison and poisoning. In theory it encourages more PC interaction (guarding resources, finding, making, distributing, using) but in reality (from what I have seen interacting with typically poison-forward groups) it means poison is off limits to most of the game.

[Tuannon]

I don't know what killed the urge to play aide types, bards, or criminals but it's been a real thing feeling the lack of those. There are alot of things to speak about for sure in the player/staff meeting.

Aides suffer from three things:

1) If you outlive your noble you are going to have a bad time. Not always true, but generally true.
2) If someone doesn't like your noble, you're going to have a bad time. Stop acting like you're invulnerable, you aren't.
3) If you don't do the seggs and someone's new aide does and desires to leapfrog your position, you're going to have a bad time.

Not to mention the catchall problems with full on cityfolk, if you get one bad apple in an interaction group it sucks the fun out of the role.

I think it's safe to say aides have some of the highest highs and some of the lowest lows.

[Halcyon]

I sympathize with the OP.   That said, I think this is an issue that would be better talked out with staff, than handled here. 

The long lived pcs I have seen die recently wouldnt have seen saved by less karma pcs or less poison.  I think they all died to good old fashioned politics.

I'd like to assert that any city vs city armed conflict is going to turn into rocket launcher tag.   Criminals and tribemen can go it it with shivs and slings.  Once you get organized militaries involved, we are on going to see 100+ day characters wield some might in a personal way.   Arm has always had a thin veneer over some very strong entrenched pcs, almost completely untouchable by the rest of the player base.  They havent all been karma pcs, either.

[mansa]

The current game dynamics is the natural fallout of some world building decisions:

a) Magickers are destroyed in Tuluk
b) Magickers are collared in Allanak
c) Magickers are "free" in certain wilderness areas
d) Muls are collared and restricted in Tuluk
e) Muls are collared and restricted in Allanak
f) Muls are "free" in certain wilderness areas.


Naturally, if a player wants to have agency in their play choices, they take their magicker or their mul to play areas that allow the players to have fun.
So, when you go to certain wilderness areas, you will see a lot of other characters that have migrated there because it's where their player gets enjoyment, because the rest of the game (and the rest of the /other players/) have prevented them from having fun.

[Bebop]

Hi there.  I was one of the players that had my character wiped out due to the staff mistake that there was a public apology for.  Maybe you were also one of those players?  I don't know.

First, I'd just like to say that 1) staff reached out to me thoroughly to get feedback. Obviously there was an apology. I think current staff is genuinely interested in feedback which is why they left this thread up.  They put a roundabout solution in place.  It's far from perfect.  And, without going too into things my character was set up as antagonist that I think brought good conflict to the game and I was happy to see staff foster and support me on that and try to remedy the situation in a roundabout way. That being said I agree there were some things that failed some us.  We can only try to push forward on it.

2) Thanks for sharing your feedback.  I hope you won't leave the game and give it more tries.  I do feel the current staff is pivoting and learning from these situations all of the time.  I think the current plot is something they'll learn from.

3) I'd just like to say, despite being harmed unfairly (which staff apologized for) due to recent IG events I really, really don't want to discourage staff from running PVE events and plotlines.  I'm not gonna lie do I always think staff are running S tier plots?  No!  But do I appreciate them acting as game masters and stirring up a bunch of shit for us - I do!  And we know it helps the game.  We can see it in the numbers.

4) I think the failure that occurs is, as some have said, in the coded execution.  The game isn't set up for a fair take on mass combat much less individual combat.  It requires a lot of staff intervention to run smoothly, to even out odds, the loading of units etc.  The other thing it takes is...

5) Player trust.  It takes the players to not just spam combat and spam others to death.  Muls, magickers and HG are all karma trusted roles.  While they aren't sponsored roles they do have some level of responsibility for acknowledging OP situations, discussing them with staff and directing their underlings in proper RP.

As well, staff are in a bind because the feedback they've overwhelming received is -

We don't want to wait to use our karma
We want full magickers
We don't want the grind

I feel players are choosing these op races in part because it does help them subvert the grind my entering the game with some level of coded power.  I believe staff can balance this but it's going to take time.

Some suggestions I have -

Make mundane skills go up faster
Rework some of the main character guilds so that they're more synergistic
Reduce learning times on skills for incredibly physically powerful races
Take on more if a GM turn based kind of system for mass combat as needed
Give players more agency during large scale events
Staff don't be afraid to have a few PVE battles on behalf of the city state, let a crew of NPC characters get wreckt instead of people who have had their character a RL year

Obviously no one is going to agree more than me that there some failures here.  Some I can't talk about openly.  But staff knows that and they are trying to learn and I'd rather see them get involved than not at all.

Also as a heavy RP player I absolutely agree that things have taken a somewhat hack and slash turn and I would like staff to hold several IG factions much more accountable for RP related trade, diplomacy etc.

[cali]

If a player were to see that the enemy outnumbered them 5-1 in heavy combat PCs and also outnumbered 2-1 in unit PCs. That PLAYER would be considered an imbecile if they attacked.  Then that is their reputation. Idiots who are 'overconfident', who fall into 'traps'.

[Bebop]

Sorry you feel frustrated. I hope you can take a break and return as well as avoid the frustration you wrote about.

This is an RPI built on a hack and slash engine. It's always been this way, but gets better and worse from time to time. I hate the combat code in PVP. It's a huge challenge to balance gameplay vs emoting and all leveraged against typing speed and code delays.

I am going to double down and say I believe that extended death scenes would be the biggest improvement we could make to removing the frustrations of the beep. https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58887.0.html or any of the hundred other threads. ANY way to extend a death scene beyond a beep or a your visions goes black...beep...would do far more for player contentment than ANY other code change, tweak, or adjustment.

The IC example brought up (some details should be viable to discuss here as it was posted as a rumor) the confident Tulukis rolled out with some untrained conscript, some half giants, and a templar who (OOC translate to IC?) was unprepared and caught of guard. They were run down and slaughtered by the mutant martial race no one has fought before. Are they worth 2-3 humans? Are the actually stronger than half giants and faster than muls because defilers haven't sucked the life out of them and the land they lived on?
-Why was it an IMM mistake? Did it suck for the players who died? Was it IC? Did they see any emotes, shouts, or imm echos?
-Would it have been better if they got to see a full scene? If that scene was basically the above, but lasted longer.

I'm going to address this and staff can delete this if they want to, but I think if I don't speculation will perisist.  I'm going to go over coded things since there's already been things posted on the boards and people know something happened.

The PCs involved OOC and IC did not want to walk into the situation given.  They were forced by a staff animated leader.

The PCs involved were given literally under five RL min before being forced to engage.  AKA no time to prepare.

PCs were not given proper info on what they were being forced to walk into.

Staff loaded imbalanced NPC units that in addition to everything else tilted the scenario into unwinnable odds for the already under prepared and unwilling PCs.

Staff had a communication break down behind the scenes. The result?  Some long lived PCs walked into a situation they didn't want to, that they weren't prepared for and it was so slanted that staff had no time to even properly represent the city state presence and a coded slaughter occured.

It happens.  It completely sucks.  Staff has apologized and taken accountability.  Our characters aren't coming back.  It opens a lot of dialogue around this and I'm here for it.  I genuinely hope it can make the game better.  Mistakes happen.  I respect how staff handled things post mistake.

I hope we can all discuss how we can make the game better.

[Halaster]

I want to clear up misconceptions because incorrect assumptions by players lead to rumors, rumors lead to people believing them as fact, which leads to everyone assuming it's the meta.

The recent war looked like a bone that was thrown into the game without any sort of build-up for flavor

It definitely did have build-up, perhaps you just didn't see it?



In regards to the new thryzn race:

To add insult to injury, these new things are again, immensely powerful

Not at all.  They are nearly identical to humans, and start with the same skills and classes as anyone else, with some restrictions on things they cannot play due to culture.  You may have met individuals who rolled good stats, or has been alive for a long time and grown powerful as an individual.

There's little time to process lizard people from an IC or OOC way when they are given an NPC army, in addition to their large player count.

There are at least 4 other groups right now who have larger player counts.
I'm not sure how much time is appropriate to 'process' and realize they're part of the game, but they've been in game for about 11 months.  Thought admittedly, much of that only some groups have seen them, so maybe you just haven't run across them?

It does seem a bit jarring that the new faction seems to have ended up in a sort of situation that reminds in a few ways of the bad stories people have posted of the times of the Tan Muark,

They are isolated, yes, but they are nothing like and having nothing like the TM of Ye Olde Days.  No waterslides!


On other topics:

I really don't want to see people not playing elves

Agreed, and that certainly is not the intention.  That said, there is no shortage at all of people playing elves, particularly desert elves.

[Veselka]

I think what would help solve this is hard caps on certain races/classes/Magick subclasses.

We already do it with Sorcerers and Psionicists, both of which CAN be pretty powerful (let's be honest? That's mostly sorcerers). Still, they are also meant to above all be RARE. This limit accomplishes rarity.

As well, there should be caps on Gemmed, caps on non-Gemmed. Caps on types of elements even. Sorry, ELKROSIANS aren't available in either aspect. Is there another magicker you want to try?

Same with karma restricted races. Make it a cap of 2 or 3 for each. Make them more rare.

Add a caveat that someone can always Special Apply for a role that is full. Staff can then decide if the game can take another Voldemort. If it can't, and they like the concept, they waitlist them and let them know when it is appropriate.

Alongside this — It really depends what we want out of the game. The sentiment that is most true is "If I could play a mildly skilled PC out of the gates, I would be more risky or realistic in playing my PC". That's not good. People should be playing to the hilt regardless of the grind. BUT — it gets tricky when you know your chances of surviving a Combat RPT or even PvP is limited at best, and rigged from the start at worst.

Then it doesn't feel good to engage with those aspects of the game. Which leads to insulation. And safe play.

We either need to make it super easy to jump into new roles and concepts that can handle themselves Day 0, or we will have more and more safe playing, less and less hardcore RP and risk taking, and vanilla plots.

[Bast]

This will be long and I have two man points. Also on my phone so sorry in advance if I typo.
One concerning rp and the other the combat system.

I don't normally weigh in much anymore but this isn't about race or class. Every now again there is a combat and beloved pc's die. In war situation often times it feels like a slaughter you had no way out of. I have been on both sides of that many times in 20ish years I have been playing. The way Armageddon's combat system is set up kinda forces you to hit hard and fast so the person you're attacking dies because if you don't "the way" is gonna get you. When you rp in a death scene often the other person flees. I have been both ends of this too. It makes nearly all deaths more about ambush and surprising the other player in my humble opinion. And that is JARRING in a game focusing on heavy RP.

I recently lost a pc I adored while in the process of storage and I felt horribly cheated. What's worse is I attempted to RP instead of just running and was unaware a code issue in the area I just happen to be in wasn't going send in the calvery like it likely should had the AI acted like real security would have. Furthermore it felt out of the blue I had no idea why this person attacked. I was really gutted by this death and I thought about taking a long break... but then something amazing happened. I got a huge outreach from staff with wonderful kuddos about the profound impact my pc had made on the game.

I never got to see any of it but I know my character was mourned deeply and by many. Her death was NOT how I wanted to shelf her but ended up being a like a greek tragedy that made her story better. I am still upset my death had zero rp to it but I learned there are so many, many things we just don't get to see that happens in the orbit of our PC's lives that make for these complex and beautiful stories.

I am sorry to hear about your experience Tranquil but I wouldn't chalk it up to lack of good rp. There are amazing things going on in the game world right now. Any PC with enough time and the luck of draw of AI stats is gonna look broken as fuck to any player that spends most of their in game time rping. That has nothing to do with class and race. Also just FYI the the Thryzn are NOT OP. I suggest playing one before you make a judgement.
 
Combat:
Now to the elephant in the room..instead of pointing out the flaws we know are there. I am going talk about a system I saw in another mud that I fucking loved. The Mud was absolutely garage but their combat was the coolest I have ever seen. Even if we just had this for big scenes it would be so much better. I also feel more inline with our HEAVY on ROLEPLAY focus.

So in this game they really tried to simulate grid based combat. When combat started in the typical fashion a grid would pop up. The grid had x,y,z coordinate. The size of the grid was assigned to the room tile (i think). Outdoor rooms were pretty big like football fields. Indoor spaces were closed quarters. Where you were on the field depended on the direction from which you entered. So if I walked in from the east and someone tailing me came in behind me to backstab me with a knife we would both be next to each other on the grid. If he shot me with arrow he would be at base range for that bow behind me. If I was coming from one east and the other guy the west we would be at opposite ends of the map. If I had been in that room for a while I would end up middle map. There was initiative order  based on speed, class skills and any boost you got to speed from race. It made agility matter. It made being mounted matter a lot. The person that started the combat would obviously go first. You had a 12 second turn in which you could move or attack both if you had the right skills. If you didn't take your turn in 12 seconds it went to the next player. The game had skills that you learn to get more movement in combat or have a better chance to flee. Fighter types had a charge ability to cover more ground to close. If you got to the edge of the map you could flee out unless someone was in your face then they had a chance to stop.

This was AMAZING in big combat even though it slowed shit down. It let good planning rule the day. You could emote and shout twice a round too. That let pc leaders make real troop movements in mob combats.

Each players in the combat had an assigned number.  Guys attacking you were red. Yellow was players that hadn't acted against anyone (like bystanders) green was anyone defending you. At any time you punch the combat code to pull up InT order and the combat map. The number assigned to the combatants was next to their l desc in order of Int.

Backstab still hurt like a bitch and they had a buggy thing where you could try to hide in combat if you weren't in direct melee but it never seemed to work properly.

It let mounts matter, archers had to think a lot about whether to move or try and get off one last shot before the fighter was in your face. It was amazing.

Flaws? Combat was slow in big fights and it got weird if someone walked in late. They could join but it felt a little unfair when that happened because of the time for them to get to the combat vs time it took to get through a few round of combat was wonky. You have 10 players in a combat it took 120 seconds to get through a round. But I never felt like I got the rug pulled out from under me or I was punished for being afk.

Death didn't feel like a sudden shock. If my hp was low I could say some last words and that helps give players a fraction of closure. The person attacking me could emote standing over me and saying some evil one liners. It just made combat better and more fun to be in. Because you got 2 dialog/emote a round and it wasn't connect to your 12s turn you had time to say stuff without it being a jumble of typos.

Also because of the grid people didn't dog pile one player. They tended to end up fighting in a more realistic looking way. Flanking came into play. It was so cool I wish I code

p.s. I really agree with comments that the *beep* death is a big part of why players take death hard. Closure matters.

PPS if we ever did move to a grid combat system range on bows and spells would be so much more immersive. You could add combat manuvers like lassoing, harpooning and grappling hooks to leverage against flying combatants. It would make combat more about tactiics, gear, and creative thinking. It would also give you time to try and just surrender and see how that played out.

[najdorf]

To OP, I do not know which era you are comparing the current one with, but it feels almost opposite to me. Back in 2000's, amount of hack & slash, mindless PK'ing, supernatural ridiculousness, etc. was 2-3 times higher than it is currently.

[Lutagar]

make threaten a skill everyone starts with at master

you shouldn't need a specific skill set to not be at a disvantage when trying to rp antgaonism

[Riev]

make threaten a skill everyone starts with at master

you shouldn't need a specific skill set to not be at a disvantage when trying to rp antgaonism

I would not say master, per se. But quite a few classes get it to a point where you can make it pretty serious.

[Bebop]

I would be fine with and maybe even love a cap on certain types in game like we do with specs but I am also not a big magick or mul player.  But I'd be down.

[Inks]

The PK seems way lower than back in the day, and the willingness to roleplay higher. I definately do not want a rollback of poisons though. I usually play assassin type pcs and from what I have seen of the poison it is less guaranteed one hit kill but still very dangerous. And more interesting.