Do you like or support the New Announcement?

[Dracul]

(comments redacted, saved for thread: https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60175.0/all.html)

Just gathering a poll. Please direct comments to Q/Q thread.

[DustMight]

Imagine if staff had made this poll as their first step.

[Dracul]

Imagine if staff had made this poll as their first step.

It would be a step towards collaborating with the community.

[Miradus]

New Coke.

[Boggis]

Imagine if staff had made this poll as their first step.

Many players naturally aren't going to like it and while player's feedback should be looked at the Staff have to look at things from multiple perspectives. When reading the responses on the GDB there's a lot of valid ones but many of them are the player voicing their displeasure at how it impacts them, their characters, their plans, etc. This is a decision that needs to be looked at at a more global level. It's like asking a patient who's got gangrene if they're ok with getting their leg amputated. Of course they're not going to like it but the doctor has to make a choice between leaving it and the patient dies or amputating the leg.

Could the message have been sign-posted/communicated by Staff a bit better? Yep, I think so. But the cold hard truth is still there in the background and action has to be taken soon. Is this necessarily the right action to take? I'm not 100% sure but I know something radical has to be done and that usually involves pain for some of those involved unfortunately. It may turn out that we end up in the same place we're headed to now anyway but it's better than doing nothing because I think this game world can survive and can offer an enjoyable experience even if it's scope is more limited than it's heyday. But time will tell I guess.

[DustMight]

This is a decision that needs to be looked at at a more global level.

This is the standard line from the staff handbook on how to alienate the playerbase that has been used for literally decades. Players are unable to look beyond their own immediate interests, the players don't care about long-term vision or goals. The sheep don't really know what they need.

Imagine, if you will, collaboration.

No one could complain if the staff and players all voted and 52% wanted this massive change: OK - this is how it is.  But that is not what staff chose to do. It is never what they chose to do. And seeing this now, in 2023 just shows you how little the staff have learned.

I want to be careful. I suspect my post sounds angry - but I'm not. I'm disappointed. I think we all know mudding is dying and dead. Armageddon will close eventually, though even that isn't/wasn't certain. What is upsetting is the staff's utter and continued disregard for the most important aspect of the game, the players. I mean, we could go through the litany of staff abuses and indiscretions and the well-meaning, half-hearted, and complete dog and pony shows made in attempt to address them over the years. This is just another of that, but it is just a shamble and a shame to pretend it is anything else.

[undoubtedly]

Would have liked the poll to include data on people who plan to continue playing or not also.

[Miradus]

I want to be careful. I suspect my post sounds angry - but I'm not. I'm disappointed. I think we all know mudding is dying and dead.

No, we DON'T know that. There's new muds going online EVERY WEEK.

People still read paper books, don't they? There's always going to be people who like their text games too. I prefer Cataclysm-DDA over Project Zomboid as well.

Someone made the reference to a doctor cutting off a patient's gangrene-infected leg.

In this case, a doctor is telling you that there's a serious problem that we can't see and that we need our leg removed.

Why? What's wrong? Can we take another look please? Is there not some new miracle drug we could try first?

[DustMight]

No, we DON'T know that. There's new muds going online EVERY WEEK.

This is interesting. I'm going to do some poking around and see.  I wonder what the average age of the mudder is?
Whenever I log into one of my pre-armageddon muds (Holy Mission, Realms) there is like me and an immortal.

[Miradus]

Yeah, I haven't checked any of my previous muds. I know Faerun the last time I checked (a year or so ago?) had like 3 people online. Forgotten Realms mud has had between 5-10 people online whenever I looked at it in the past for almost a decade now.

The Mud Connector (TMC) shows a total of 663 muds listed as of right now. A lot of them probably have between 5-15 players.

Armageddon is just one of the more popular muds out there.

[betweenford]

Imagine if staff had made this poll as their first step.

The poll doesn't matter and Halaster has made it clear that no amount of negativity, backlash, or community opinion will change the staff course. All while the GDB comments and the announcement itself uses softer language to create the illusion of larger player input being taken into account.

The only input they're going to take are going to be for the slim amount of things they haven't decided on behind the scenes.

[DustMight]

Imagine if staff had made this poll as their first step.

The poll doesn't matter and Halaster has made it clear that no amount of negativity, backlash, or community opinion will change the staff course. All while the GDB comments and the announcement itself uses softer language to create the illusion of larger player input being taken into account.

The only input they're going to take are going to be for the slim amount of things they haven't decided on behind the scenes.

100%. I was being sarcastic.
I also think you are being either generous or naive (don't worry, I am too) to think they will really take any input on things undecided behind the scenes.

[Ulga]

I said this in another thread, but its worth mentioning. I was around before and during the arm 2.0 fiasco. This feels like that.
It seems like staff are just bored, and are willing to destroy /everything/ in an attempt to make /something/ different happen.
RIP

Its funny, if you look at Arm as an organization, its almost an introductory course of "What not to do"

Ignore your consumers
Alienate your consumers
Force unwanted changes on your consumers
Ignore all known effective practices of development and marketing.

Whatever.

[betweenford]

For if the above doesn't embed on the forum because it's not showing up on the preview.
Courtesy of: https://iberia.jdai.pt/mudstats/mud/armageddon_mud

Two weeks ago, 45 people were logged into the mud according to MSSP data. At 20:00est. Right now, at peak, 8 people are online.

The mud had fairly consistent logins during the last thirty days, with peaks usually being anywhere from 32-45 people. Statistics don't lie. The game was in no real danger of dying, even with dogshit staff retention. What an overblown and needless reaction from the producer team.

[BadSkeelz]

The idea has merit, the announcement and implementation has been the usual Staff PR kamikaze.

[Kestria]

What a surprise it is more no than yes..

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

...Why are other topics on this being nuked now?
This is becoming even more of a PR disaster very quickly
I get a bad feeling it's gonna turn into "yknow what actually the game's done" in like 2 days dlkfjsldfk

Edit: NVM, it seems there was a bug on linking to a forum post because it had been turned into a pinned thing

[Boggis]

The mud had fairly consistent logins during the last thirty days, with peaks usually being anywhere from 32-45 people. Statistics don't lie. The game was in no real danger of dying, even with dogshit staff retention. What an overblown and needless reaction from the producer team.

I'd somewhat disagree. The numbers of logins are fine for the game to continue. But they're not fine for the size of the world where it's essentially split in two with no real interaction between the two areas. This problem has been around for a long time and it's only getting worse as the number of players slowly but surely decline. This leads to Houses/Clans in the cities being underpopulated and you get a much reduced level of interaction both intra-clan and conflict/cooperation between clans. Sooner or later you'll hit an inflection point where it snowballs and people will just start leaving the game very quickly as they're not getting the required levels of interaction and then it's game over. So something has to be done to address this now. Really I think something should've been done years ago to address it and possibly was attempted with the closure of Tuluk but that was handled poorly from what I can see as many groups of players see themselves in one camp or the other when it comes to Allanak and Tuluk.

Staff retention is important. Without them we have no game. But likewise with no players there's no game either so there has to be some balance there. All of this could've been communicated and managed better. But the overall idea of consolidating the playerbase is something that needs to be done for the long-term health of the game in my opinion. There's always going to be pain with this type of change but I'd agree that this could've been lessened with some better communication and sign-posting. It's possible that the way it was abruptly announced has already pushed us to the inflection point above.

[Lotion]

I think seasons will be awesome. We'll get a giant war RPT at the end of each season, it'll be grand.
Maybe we even have "unscheduled" finishes where it ends when the war ends kind of thing. Letting players control the aftermath of major battles has produced my least favorite change to the game so far (removal of Luir's apartments). I think allowing staff to decide that sort of thing would be much better, just so that some dipshit doesn't destroy the most fun and interesting apartments in the game.

[Usiku]

the most fun and interesting apartments in the game.

I miss it so much.

[dunecrawler]

I'm not against a 'pwipe', losing my character on the regular, or even switching things up. But I'm worried about one thing:

After a 'break', there are at least some currently active players who have found something else to do, and will not be coming back. I'm currently not playing much, not because I'm not interested in arm. But I got fed up at some point, tried another mud, and got stuck there. The reasons that made me take a break from arm don't exist anymore, I'm no longer annoyed, and playing is fun again. But now I'm engaged somewhere else, involved in plots there, and also having fun, so I'm not all that motivated to return to arm.

If arm closes for a time, I expect a lot of players not to come back for similar reasons - they've found something else to do with their time and are sticking with it. The playerbase might shrink significantly, and I'm not sure we can afford this at this point.

[Ammut]

I've taken year long breaks from Armageddon before.  Numerous ones.  I generally come back to see how things are going, how they have progressed, and see if any of my old friends are still playing.

Do I wish there had been a candid dialogue between staff and players on the problems that led up to this? Sure.

That said, I am in favor of the change.  If it keeps the game alive in one form or another instead of it simply going offline forever, so be it.

[Kialae]

I've never felt LESS supported by staff since my last Storyteller left, and an adversarial admin clumsily took over. Wiping the game doesn't matter to me any more, because they've sucked the fun out of the game and didn't want to fix it. Bring on seasons. Maybe I can have fun again.

[MeTekillot]

Yes, this is in line with a drum I've been beating for the last few years.

If I had an improvement to suggest, it would be to wrench current plots into some more overarching apocalyptic or large scale impact mega plot. But I haven't played in a year, so I don't have skin in the game of any current happenings in game.

[Windstorm]

I support, broadly, any changes that will lead to storytelling and storyteller empowerment, interaction, player agency and general staff happiness.

I believe these are largely the goals of the changes, so I support them even if I don't agree categorically with the implementation.