Think we need to close some stuff.

[Pariah]

I was looking at the weekly report on the main site, and last week there were 8 leader reports.  On a game that averages 20-30 people playing it.

I think we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians.  Might need consolidate some shit.

[Trevalyan]

That average reflects people playing the game at one time, not the total population playing Armageddon. For instance, we need leaders especially for eurozone players, not just primetime NA. Some leader reports are for people who work to fund other groups within a city that don't have their own leadership characters but still have a player count.

Of course, all that is academic. Tuluk currently has a posting for two noble roles, which is a clear enough sign that the staff disagrees with you.

[Pariah]

Yeah, I get there are people who play other time zones but my experience on this long weekend is that at like 5am which is afternoon for the other side of the pond there is 5 players logged in.

I feel like they need to get more than just a noble and hope people make characters to join them.  They should be doing staffing calls for whole houses or whole gmhs.

"We need an Oash Noble, two gemmed and an aide, please send your role applications".

That way it's not just the noble dicking around solo rping with their npc guard.

[Lizzie]

Yeah, I get there are people who play other time zones but my experience on this long weekend is that at like 5am which is afternoon for the other side of the pond there is 5 players logged in.

I feel like they need to get more than just a noble and hope people make characters to join them.  They should be doing staffing calls for whole houses or whole gmhs.

"We need an Oash Noble, two gemmed and an aide, please send your role applications".

That way it's not just the noble dicking around solo rping with their npc guard.

Sure. And then the noble fires the aide because they don't get along, and now he's just ruined a sponsored role concept instead of simply - not hired them in the first place.

Same reason I'm against auto-clanning Bynners.

[Pariah]

Same reason I'm against auto-clanning Bynners.

Slight derail, but my experience with Bynners has almost always been either hardcore sparring day in day out (IC time) or wandering around empty training halls and then dicking off into the wilderness since nobody is on.

Having them autopopulate seems like a good solution to the leader having a life and not being able to be on 24/7.

[askaran]

Why not try it out at least? Seems like a half-decent idea, they do it with these bad-guy rolecalls all the time. If it doesn't work out it doesn't work out but it's worth trying.

[askaran]

And autopopping Bynners wouldn't be an issue to begin with if every Runner/Trooper/Sergeant was petrified of spending any free time outside of the compound, at least in Allanak.

[Dracul]

I was in a tavern in [redacted] with 10 pcs last night (about two hours forward from this time, so 8ish server time).

I've also been roaming around with people hiding away with one or two pcs on a super sekrit plot whose primary goal is to keep a third of fourth pc from finding out about said plot.

The latter tends to happen more often, but when you stumble upon a huge group its fun.

Related: Mass combat is clunky clunky clunky and challenging to manage. Beware of those large groups as well!

[Pariah]

I'm not really ANTI any clan, but just struggle to see why he have so many little straggler leaders.

For example:

You've got GMH's that are pretty much needed in the game, I would say that most people accept that as fact, you NEED some of the stuff they provide.

Then you have nobles, who are "nice to have, but unnecessary."

Now lets look at it purely by a numbers game.  Let's say that 8 number is actually 8 leaders, three GMH, Five Rando nobles/crimsonwind etc.

If you have a Saturday evening like now:

who
Immortals
---------

There are 0 visible Immortals currently in the world.

There are 26 players currently in the world, other than yourself.

Take 26 - 8 = 18 "rando folks."  But in that 18 you probably have at least one psionicist and one sorcerer, so let's call it 16 really.

Now we know the Byn is the biggest group "normally" So let's assume of that group there is 5 which I feel is a conservative number of Bynners both north and south.

So that takes us down to 11 player.  So essentially all these leaders (Using the 8 number from the last weeks result) are all probably looking for an aide, more buddies, minions, raiders etc etc.  So you're looking at BEST CASE, two people in a clan/noblehouse/gmh, but mostly going to be looking at one leader one minion.  While low teacher/student ratios are good in the classroom, that's not good in a RP game where these "leaders" are supposed to be creating their own plots and all that jazz.

Let's not forget Templars, there is two per city, so our 11 number now potentially goes down to 7.

Then you've got serial indies (Like me) who will probably never join those clans.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59299.0.html

At a quick count, that's six roles staff is currently seeking regular ass folks to play, THEN there are two nobles open in Tuluk.

The math ain't mathin people.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60080.0.html (My post about opening up OOC coordination for roles that aren't staff directed as a way to encourage more players to play the game)

[Mithradates]

You didn't factor in the probability that people sometimes, and actually do sent in Character Reports, instead of Character Reports - Leader. Its just numbers.

[whengravityfails]

Pariah, you keep fixating on "x amount of people on at one time" as opposed to how many people log on daily, spread out over the day. That's where your argument keeps getting tripped up and falling on its face. If staff didn't think we needed these roles, they'd not open them. I don't see an issue with a lack of people for particular roles. Besides, you are /very/ subjective on what roles are worthwhile and are not.

[Pariah]

Pariah, you keep fixating on "x amount of people on at one time" as opposed to how many people log on daily, spread out over the day. That's where your argument keeps getting tripped up and falling on its face. If staff didn't think we needed these roles, they'd not open them. I don't see an issue with a lack of people for particular roles. Besides, you are /very/ subjective on what roles are worthwhile and are not.

100%, but even if I take out my dislike for nobility, it still isn't looking great.

Also yes I realize that there are people who log in for an hour and go do RL shit, and can't play the game for hours at a time.  I get it, but those people also really aren't the core of the game, the movers and shakers, they are more like slightly better programmed NPCs that don't randomly clone themselves on a reboot.

[mansa]

I was looking at the weekly report on the main site, and last week there were 8 leader reports.  On a game that averages 20-30 people playing it.

I think we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians.  Might need consolidate some shit.

This will never be done again, because of the horrible response of the players the last time this happened, as stated by the administrators and producers of the game over the last 7 years.

[CirclelessBard]

I can't think of anything worse you can do to an RP game than mass closure of clans or closure of an entire play area.

When I played Shadows of Isildur, the staff closed the northern sphere which led to about half of the game's players simply leaving and many of them making their own game. Then I played Armageddon until a few months after the closure of Tuluk. I tried my best to stick around, but the combination of having less play areas to choose from and seeing community members at the time gloat about Tuluk's closure like it was a competition between it and Allanak, made me (and many other people) decide to leave.

Now that I'm back, the last thing I want to see is this game shoot itself in the foot again. And I think we shouldn't use faulty data like comparing total reports to average player count to justify extremely short-sighted change.

[Kaathe]

We had 150 unique logins that same week. 187 requests.

It's right there in the same report.

It's not my area, but I don't see chatter about leaders not being able to fill minion slots.  Remember nobles can  be keeping other orgs and independents busy as a "leader" even if they don't have a single employee.

[Windstorm]

While I don't know what the answer is, I do know there's some truth in that the playerbase is too scattered for the size of the world, the number of play options we do have, and further, for the endless numbers of divides we're supposed to play out between them.

There are so many hurdles to interaction that even many if not most of the players you run into ingame are people you finger wag aren't allowed to associate with, or you're supposed to hate, or whatever. Allanak in particular right now, through most hours, is an absolute ghost town.

Also, community problems like these are so ugh:

seeing community members at the time gloat about Tuluk's closure like it was a competition between it and Allanak, made me (and many other people) decide to leave.

On the whole, I agree with the playerbase needing to be condensed and for them to have an easier time interacting with each other without absolutely demanding hate in every direction. The playerbase numbers simply don't support the infrastructure and there are a lot of times where I feel the game is trying to run, in this way, in the opposite direction of its own survivability.

[Fredd]

We had 150 unique logins that same week. 187 requests.

It's right there in the same report.

It's not my area, but I don't see chatter about leaders not being able to fill minion slots.  Remember nobles can  be keeping other orgs and independents busy as a "leader" even if they don't have a single employee.

My leaders get minions fine. It might not be as deep of a web as I used to be able to get on my stealthy chars. But I can still pull 1-2 loyal Amos' to do my bidding.

I think things are more or less fine, though some minor fine tuning could probably be done, as I don't know any numbers beyond what's posted on the website each week. But I notice a fair amount of good guys and bad guys.

People just rotate in cycles like they always did. city players bounce between Allanak and Tuluk, with an occasional stormer here and there. Indies filter through the various tribes and luirs, before rotating to storm or a city for a change of pace. The game has something for every play style and keeping that going is key to the game's life.

[Miradus]

Leaders need to recognize they are COMPETING for minions in this game.

Start being more fun. More empowering. More better.

Usually when I see someone who can't get minions, there's a REASON. It's never due to a shortage of people wanting to be minions. It's due to nobody wanting to be THAT ONE's minion.

[Lizzie]

Leaders need to recognize they are COMPETING for minions in this game.

Start being more fun. More empowering. More better.

Usually when I see someone who can't get minions, there's a REASON. It's never due to a shortage of people wanting to be minions. It's due to nobody wanting to be THAT ONE's minion.

There's also the leader who has minions - but not employees. A leader can find plenty of people to help them get things done, without needing to codedly clan them with the exception of clan-specific crafts, and soldiers needing to be clanned AND promoted in order to arrest criminals.

[Windstorm]

Leaders need to recognize they are COMPETING for minions in this game.

Start being more fun. More empowering. More better.

Usually when I see someone who can't get minions, there's a REASON. It's never due to a shortage of people wanting to be minions. It's due to nobody wanting to be THAT ONE's minion.

Honestly, I feel like a lot of this is on the structure of leadership on Armageddon.

In very few roles - outside of tribes that is? - is leadership a position that is earned IC. Instead, it's applied for and selected by staff and I'd argue that far more often than not, it doesn't work out.

If I could, I'd move it to a far opposite model.

[Miradus]

In a game that should be fostering story, I do think more leaders should come from people who have played up the role and worked their way to the top. Always they should be selected from within the ranks, if at all possible.

[Lizzie]

In a game that should be fostering story, I do think more leaders should come from people who have played up the role and worked their way to the top. Always they should be selected from within the ranks, if at all possible.

They sometimes are, when it makes sense. The two reasons I kept rejecting being promoted to Sergeant was because I was also a staffer, and not -allowed- to promote into a leadership position, AND because I didn't want the responsibility of roleplaying a clan leader responsible for a crew of clannies, hiring and training, fighting, scheduling, organizing, herding them, discipline, etc. etc.  And so, someone had to be sponsored with an open role call for the role.  I outlived five Sergeants in that role, some of whom were promoted from within, and some from staff-sponsored role calls.

The Byn used to promote from within all the time. Got a dead Sergeant? Great. The next in line is now Sergeant.  That doesn't work when the dead Sergeant had no Troopers, because it makes zero sense to promote a recruit to a Sergeant.

Crafters and aides of Agents being groomed for leadership have often resulted in promotion to leadership positions from within, in the GMHs.

But you can't promote to a noble position. Your character either IS a noble, or they're NOT.  And templars are brought into "templar training" at an age younger than the coded ability of the game allows, so PCs can't promote to be templars either.

A Sun Runner leader can't be a gavram and if the gavram is the only PC in the clan at the moment, then - you just have to accept a sponsored leader.

Meanwhile, the leader's PLAYER has to be willing to take on the additional responsibility, and have time to play that extra responsibility. Not all players are willing to do that, or have time to do it.

So what do you do when you have a clan with players who don't want to play leadership roles, who enjoy being minions, or who aren't even qualified to play leaders in the clan they're in (a half-giant in the Byn -cannot- be promoted to Sergeant, and an elven hunter for Kurac -cannot- become an Agent?

So all these things - some more common than others, all combine to result in the need for sponsored leadership roles.

[Miradus]

Again ... "if at all possible."

[Lizzie]

Again ... "if at all possible."

I agree, but - I think it's already happening "if at all possible." 

[Windstorm]

I disagree.

It's fairly clear at least to me that an unwillingness and fear of meaningful change in the world to accomodate a lower playerbase and facilitate more (and better) interaction is a roadblock that Arm's failed to address and backed down from at every turn, probably since before I even got here.

In addition I think we're viewing the results of that, imo short-sighted, decisionmaking - maybe in truth, lack of decisionmaking.

Storytime!

I logged off last night because my play area was dead. I logged into somewhere else that shares part of our playerbase with us and 76 unique accounts were logged in. That's half of our weekly total. It's a place where you can just message the highest staffers and have a conversation. It's a place that's closing soon to make broad, sweeping improvements, because what was good enough when they made it isn't currently good enough for their vision.

I think Arm could take some lessons from them, honestly.