Crafting High Quality Weapons Q&A

[najdorf]

If you are going so meta to actually ask for an -amazing- weapon IG...I dunno, expect a hard look at your karma or something?

Unless you mean it looks amazing and you don't care about combat effectiveness, in which case go wild.

Amazing will not be becoming the new average.

I don't get the karma review thing.
Perhaps language barrier, though, can't see no one above this message suggesting or mentioning asking for -amazing- weapon.
Though the conversation following in the tread assumes someone did, and Brokkr responded to it.

Overall, my take is, Brokkr misunderstood one of the above entries, otherwise mentioning of karma review sounds a little off.

[Brokkr]

Not sure how anyone interpreted that as karma review.

Hard look is not a karma review, it is a Why the hell is a 2K player being so meta? moment.

[BadSkeelz]

Not sure how anyone interpreted that as karma review.

Hard look is not a karma review, it is a Why the hell is a 2K player being so meta? moment.

Sure sounds like one.

[Suhuy]

Not sure how anyone interpreted that as karma review.

Hard look is not a karma review, it is a Why the hell is a 2K player being so meta? moment.

When literally every player in this thread thinks that by karma review what you actually mean is karma review, it becomes time to stop blaming players for misunderstanding you and start communicating in a clearer and more courteous manner. Alternatively, you may wish to consider not posting in topics like this since you don't exactly have a history of being civil with the playerbase when discussing such stuff.

[Patuk]

Not sure how anyone interpreted that as karma review.

Hard look is not a karma review, it is a Why the hell is a 2K player being so meta? moment.

It 100% registers as a threat, yes.

[betweenford]

Not sure how anyone interpreted that as karma review.

Hard look is not a karma review, it is a Why the hell is a 2K player being so meta? moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

[najdorf]

As I interpret it, Brokkr's last message subtly hints at a possible reconsideration of his stance. This presents us, the players, with an opportunity to embody the spirit of chivalry—by perceiving his words with grace and understanding, and gently diffusing the tension.

[Riev]

As I interpret it, Brokkr's last message subtly hints at a possible reconsideration of his stance. This presents us, the players, with an opportunity to embody the spirit of chivalry—by perceiving his words with grace and understanding, and gently diffusing the tension.

Yes, or words and actions can have consequence. This is not a situation where "subtlety" should prevail.

On topic though, I think the big thing is the "disappointment" I've seen in just the short time this new stuff has been in place. Someone gets a "good" quality weapon and its apparently trash, not worthwhile, not paying for it, etc.

The idea is that you can buy stock shit at average quality. You want something better, find a crafter and they might be able to make a few good or even the rare Very Good items.

Go to Salarr and their Salarr-specific designs are better, lighter, more damaging, etc.
Salarr Good Stone Bludgeon is going to be better than indie good stone bludgeon.

But I've seen players/PCs get their under-garments in a bunch because they demand only the best at all times. Commoner trash, requiring VG or Amazing at all times. I think it may be time to roll up a Salarri, myself, and start telling people they'll get whats made for them or they can buy from Steve down the street.

[najdorf]

As I interpret it, Brokkr's last message subtly hints at a possible reconsideration of his stance. This presents us, the players, with an opportunity to embody the spirit of chivalry—by perceiving his words with grace and understanding, and gently diffusing the tension.

Yes, or words and actions can have consequence. This is not a situation where "subtlety" should prevail.

Damn, I love passion of this community, staff or player alike. 



"Staff took your passion. They drove your people away from game, to scratch a living of misery! Murderers! Take back the game they stole from you. Burn every village! It will begin with Brokkr. Too long have these immortals stood against you. But no more."

[Brokkr]

Not sure how anyone interpreted that as karma review.

Hard look is not a karma review, it is a Why the hell is a 2K player being so meta? moment.

When literally every player in this thread thinks that by karma review what you actually mean is karma review, it becomes time to stop blaming players for misunderstanding you and start communicating in a clearer and more courteous manner. Alternatively, you may wish to consider not posting in topics like this since you don't exactly have a history of being civil with the playerbase when discussing such stuff.

We do not initiate a karma review based on some perceived minor bad behavior.  At most we might pinfo the character so we can know if it is a sustained behavior.

[Suhuy]

Not sure how anyone interpreted that as karma review.

Hard look is not a karma review, it is a Why the hell is a 2K player being so meta? moment.

When literally every player in this thread thinks that by karma review what you actually mean is karma review, it becomes time to stop blaming players for misunderstanding you and start communicating in a clearer and more courteous manner. Alternatively, you may wish to consider not posting in topics like this since you don't exactly have a history of being civil with the playerbase when discussing such stuff.

We do not initiate a karma review based on some perceived minor bad behavior.  At most we might pinfo the character so we can know if it is a sustained behavior.

Uh huh. You'll just have "a hard look at their karma or something" which is toooooootally not the same thing at all. I wonder why every player here interpreted it that way.

I love how you're dodging the other observations in this thread, such as how your behavior is tantamount to gas lighting or that your words 100% come across as a threat. What is it about receiving feedback (especially when it's from the entire playerbase) that you are so inexorably resistant to every time? Every single player here is trying to tell you the same thing and you're like "nope, nope, nope!" I just can't imagine this being the hill I would want to die on.

[Usiku]

Please don't turn a conversation about weapons crafting into an opportunity to try and back a staff member into a corner. It isn't fun for anyone when an offhand statement gets picked apart and scrutinised. I would hope that everyone here was able to get the gist of what Brokkr was trying to say.. e.g. If you're a high karma player and you're being super meta about weapons quality in game, then check yourself because that's kind of crappy.

Pedantry for the sake pedantry is not super helpful. Neither is mountains out of molehills. I personally prefer najdorf's approach. 

If you have a genuine issue with a staff member's conduct there is a (now player overseen) avenue for addressing it.

[eska]

IC'ly if my character has the correct skill, he can understand how good a weapon is. So it shouldn't be called meta if my char says IG that he wants a very good weapon or something even better than that. It's the same as poisons. Assessing the poison says it is weak or average. Would it also be considered as meta if someone says IG that the poison is average?

If a PC sees something IG using the assess command, it is totally IC.

IMO the below are all shown when you assess an item with the correct skill so they are not meta but IC:

• An item weighing 5 stones.
• A container has a capacity of 60 stones.
• A poison being inert or weak.
• A tablet being old.
• A weapon that can be held in two hands.
• An item that a player can wear.
• A weapon being terrible or amazing quality.

Edited to add "the assess command" above.

[najdorf]

Sometimes it's okay, but can get ridiculous if taken to troll levels.

The tall, muscular man grabs your leg and knocks you down!

You say, in sirihish:
"I feel like my kicking is journeyman now, I'm not an apprentice at it any more."

[eska]

Sometimes it's okay, but can get ridiculous if taken to troll levels.

The tall, muscular man grabs your leg and knocks you down!

You say, in sirihish:
"I feel like my kicking is journeyman now, I'm not an apprentice at it any more."

Yeah.  You are right. My bad. I should have specified that what you see in assess.

[Usiku]

Sometimes it's okay, but can get ridiculous if taken to troll levels.

The tall, muscular man grabs your leg and knocks you down!

You say, in sirihish:
"I feel like my kicking is journeyman now, I'm not an apprentice at it any more."

A bit this yep!

Also, there is a difference between just engaging with the game as it is codedly presented to you and really digging into the RP around something. The game presents something to you, the player, via assess - that's the code part of the game, and no different from any non-RPI mud, what you choose to do with that and what you decide your PC knows and how and why - that's the RP part. So you may be able to see that the dagger you have is 'very good' or even 'good'.. but what if it is the best dagger your PC has ever seen in their whole lives? To them it might seem amazing, incredible, the best dagger ever ever.. until they see something better. And maybe they wouldn't reaaaally know how good a weapon was until they had actually tried it out and used it to stab a few things with?

Maybe in an ideal world we would code it so that when you assess a weapon, the quality it shows you is relative to your PCs worldly experiences.. and maybe that should only show up after the weapon has been used a bit so they have a feel for it? I would hope we don't have to go quite that far though.

You can choose to play this game at either end of the spectrum, but we do hope that our high karma players are championing the RPI standards that help us to create the incredibly immersive world that we all enjoy.

[Riev]

As a person who has switched from guild_warrior to class_artisan over the years, I think what would be more helpful on the part of people making requests is:

What kind of weapon do you want
What sort of material do you want it made out of
How expensive do you expect it to be

Material matters A LOT MORE than it used to, for one, and for two ... if someone wants "something I can ES" vs "Something made for two handing", I don't know if its publically available but it should be somewhere that like "a Greatsword is a two hander" vs "a Bastard Sword is EP/ETWO" vs "a longsword is versatile, EP/ES/ETWO"

Ideally so someone can say "I want a greatsword, preferably made out of bone, or shell. Heavy, but I don't want to be spending 1500 on a single blade"

Boom. alright. Let me buy some bone and shell and see what I can make.

Opposed to "I want an amazing bludgeon I don't care the cost" and its some ... whelp Byn Runner with no status but lucked into a couple large killing NPCs in the 'rinth.

[cnemus]

I don't know if its publically available but it should be somewhere that like "a Greatsword is a two hander" vs "a Bastard Sword is EP/ETWO" vs "a longsword is versatile, EP/ES/ETWO"

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58907.0.html

[Yelinak]

Sometimes it's okay, but can get ridiculous if taken to troll levels.

The tall, muscular man grabs your leg and knocks you down!

You say, in sirihish:
"I feel like my kicking is journeyman now, I'm not an apprentice at it any more."

A bit this yep!

No, not "a bit of this, yep!"

All of it, yep; if, one day, you see fit to apply this standard of roleplay to the rest of the game. If, one day, you (not you personally, of course, but "you staff") see fit to make this a game where people can expect that the in-game realities rule supreme, and where breaches thereof are met with the same level of scrutiny and possible retribution as promised by our dear Brokkr, you can post such a thing. But not now, and not for years and years past.

But for as long as we see established karma characters twinking balls-to-the walls on a daily basis, any remarks about invoking karma reviews based on the words one chooses to use in one's character's speech will cling very hollow. For as long as it remains true that some players get away with wholesale powergaming and flagrant twinking, it is patently unreasonable to say anything about the language that anyone chooses to use when they portray their characters' behavior.

Because there are so many players in this game who do no more than the barest minimum in portraying their characters. Armageddon has acquired a reputation in the RPI circle for being the place where roleplay goes to die. You're overjoyed when you meet someone who does more than grunt or nod at one's efforts of characterisation. This problem is not combatted by targeted strikedowns, it's a cultural issue, and it's very much one that exists here.

I can go out right now and meet some dude in the desert, and as soon as the movement delay allows me to, I can murder him without a word or an emote. It will be deemed legitimate by the rules of the game. What do you think that player will do next time they're in a similar situation? They'll resort to code. And yet here we are, lambasting players for using an innocuous word related to non-conflict commerce, as if that's where this battle should be fought.

Roleplay on ArmageddonMUD went to shit when there was no longer anyone amongst the senior staff who cared about the narrative. That's when it stopped mattering whether you actually portrayed a believable character and did things that made sense. When a certain purple-haired lady left this community, the literary spirit of this game died.

I will retch each time some admin tells me that it's bad play to use a certain word because it happens to be the one the code tells me, on the same day that my clan's leader has sparred for 90 minutes traight, or when the noble lord I serve has told me to keep working on peek until I learn how to spot hidden individuals.

The roleplaying standards of Armageddon are for shit, because they haven't been maintained, and swiping at the lowest-hanging and most-inconsequential fruit is not how that is addressed. How about not focusing karma awards near-exclusively on those who spend time serving as clanleads? How about not letting 'friends of staff' carry out grotesque acts of twinkery unchallenged while striking down on minor acts from those who aren't friends?

Maybe then, if you did that, it would one day again (as it once was) be a game where it makes sense to point out minor things like word choice and inconsequential acts as potentiak breaches of the roleplaying norms in a so-called RPI. Until then, however, clean the living room before you start vacuuming the cellar, because RP on Arm has turned to shit in the last decade.

[Yelinak]

I'll add a little more. Why not.

There was once a time when the way one portrayed one's character, and had them act, was taken into account when it came to judging how good a roleplayer they were. For whatever reason, that seems to have been almost entirely lost when Sanvean left. Being an author, she understood that it wasn't all about bureaucracy and services rendered. She understood that what matters - or should matter - in this game was: the story.

Then she left. And then that notion died. Now, it's all about tallying the months you've spent serving as a canlead, and how diligent (and, above all, how polite!) you were in your correspondence with staff. Meanwhile, if you're not in a position where that matters, it seems you can do whatever you want... until you catch someone's ire, and then it's heavy-handed punishment the moment they see fit.

And there was never any communication beforehand. You weren't warned that you should cool it, or told that you were toeing the line. No, it was just sudden punishment one day, after six months where you hadn't heard a peep from anyone upstairs, and you may very well have spent that whole time wondering if the barebones roleplay you witness on a daily basis means that nobody even pays attention to what goes on in the game at all.

So any concerns about what specfic words one uses when portraying their character's dialogue need to come long, long after the much-needed addressing of the absolutely horrible, toxic and ridiculous roleplaying standards that pass for daily fare in this game. It's frankly idiotic how shameless the twinking has been for a while now, and uttering the word 'amazing' is the common cold against the plague that is a seemingly unmonitored roleplaying environment where the best twink wins.

[Usiku]

Thank you for the scathing review. I'm not sure it's the right place for it, and you're not entirely correct in all your assumptions, but it may surprise you to find that it's actually quite difficult to wrangle an entire playerbase to... just behave the way you want them to. Is the quality of the RP here entirely the responsibility of the staff or is it also on the players and the community as a whole? Just because I can't click my fingers and make a thing so doesn't mean I don't want it or care about it. I also don't think it is pointless to discuss the RP surrounding this small topic, even if you feel the larger picture is broken, because.. to twist a metaphor.. pennies make pounds.. and it is in the details that we can try to remind each other of the quality that we would like to see.

That said, this is a thread about crafting high quality weapons.. therefore if RP is being discussed.. it is going to be in the context of crafting high quality weapons. If you want to have an in depth conversation about the over-arching quality of RP.. then perhaps start a different thread for it?

And as an aside, because it drives me just a little up the wall that everyone here seems to get this wrong.. 'toe the line' means to fall in line and conform. It does not mean to push boundaries.

[Halaster]

But I've seen players/PCs get their under-garments in a bunch because they demand only the best at all times. Commoner trash, requiring VG or Amazing at all times. I think it may be time to roll up a Salarri, myself, and start telling people they'll get whats made for them or they can buy from Steve down the street.

Do it!  You'd have my support.

[Halaster]

It's fine to use the word "amazing" when speaking of weapons.

Ok:

"I'd like you to make the most amazing weapon you can, one that Tektolnes would be jealous of!"
"This is the most amazing sword I've ever seen!"
"Noble Turdface's mace was absolutely amazing, can you make me something like that!?"

Try to avoid:

"I don't want something merely good or very good, I'd like it amazing quality please".

I will diverge from Brokkr here and say on record that you will not be karma docked, or have a karma review, if you do.  I'm speaking to fellow staff here as much as the player base when I say we have to move ourselves away from that sort of attitude.  We want to keep our standards as high as we can, but let's not quibble or punish over the small shit.  "Good RP" (which I agree with Usiku needs its own topic) is "playing the role of this character and their life well and according to their story".  It's not about acting skills, though those certainly -do- play a big part and make the telling and reading of the story more enjoyable.   It's about telling the story of your character and the world around you, consistently and realistically within the settings of the game.

Someone who doesn't emote very well or says some things that are kinda meh, but actually considers their surroundings, the story of others, tries to engage other people and involve them in the story, and all that?  Far more important that the right use of words.

Anyway.  I thought Usiku posted already, but we're making a slight change to the 3-month process.  Expect that soon.

[Suhuy]

I will diverge from Brokkr here and say on record that you will not be karma docked, or have a karma review, if you do.  I'm speaking to fellow staff here as much as the player base when I say we have to move ourselves away from that sort of attitude.

This, as far as I'm concerned, is the right tone and is an example for how we should expect/hope the game to be staffed moving forward.

Corrective behavior is not about punishments or threat tactics. If you can't look at yourself as a mentor and only see yourself as a policeman then frankly leadership just isn't for you. Step down.

Thank you for the clarification, Halaster. I believe that's all anyone in this thread really wanted.

[Krath]

I will diverge from Brokkr here and say on record that you will not be karma docked, or have a karma review, if you do.  I'm speaking to fellow staff here as much as the player base when I say we have to move ourselves away from that sort of attitude.

This, as far as I'm concerned, is the right tone and is an example for how we should expect/hope the game to be staffed moving forward.

Corrective behavior is not about punishments or threat tactics. If you can't look at yourself as a mentor and only see yourself as a policeman then frankly leadership just isn't for you. Step down.

Thank you for the clarification, Halaster. I believe that's all anyone in this thread really wanted.

+1. Thank you, Halaster.